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What he does want is to be the most powerful leader China has ever had - and the Communist Party just handed him that victory. At the end of May the hardliners won. Early on the morning of June 4, the tanks rolled in. The massacre at Tiananmen Square ended debate about political reform. Instead, the Communist Party turned to economic reform. But Xi's China is not Mao's China - and Xi's ambition for himself and for his country far exceeds anything Mao ever dreamed of. irannews.ru Then Covid threw a spanner in the works. "Picking fights with your neighbours. Dusting off plans to build large artificial islands and fortify them with military installations. Ramping up the pressure on Japan and Taiwan. It's a kind of self-encirclement that Chinese foreign policy has produced," she says. "She believes in leading from the front. She also believes that we need a fresh face to take on all of these challenges." "China is now doing all sorts of things that it's always wanted to do but wasn't powerful enough to do," Mr McGregor says. "Taiwan was always there. The South China Sea was always there. Taking on America, driving it out of Asia was always an ambition, but they didn't say it out loud." "Once the firing starts it's three deep breaths, a couple of swear words and you move on." Francois told reporters: "We believe that we have one - and potentially two - extremely strong options to be leader of the Conservative Party, but as a group we were unable to collectively endorse either candidate." In the spring of that year hundreds of thousands of students and workers occupied central Beijing to protest against corruption and rising prices, and demand reform. Behind the high walls of the Communist Party's leadership compound, Zhongnanhai, the party's top rung split. Moderates led by Zhao tried to use the protests to push further reform. Hardliners, led by Premier Li Peng, believed the students' goal was to overthrow the party, and wanted the protests quashed.