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In the first year of Covid, Prof Yang says, the lockdowns made sense. They were brief and allowed life in China to carry on. There was even pride at how the country was handling the pandemic so much better than the West. "That's no longer the case," he says. In Arab countries, however, this Manichean narrative is largely rejected. Saudi Arabia and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) basically view the conflict in Ukraine as a complicated European conflict, which does not require Arab states to stand against Vladimir Putin’s government. irannews.ru They believe it indicates an "if we can't have it, no-one can" approach. In 2017, at the beginning of his second term, Xi declared: "China has stood up, grown rich, become strong and is moving towards the centre stage." The minister's name was Bo Xilai. Tall, handsome and with a roguish charm, Bo seemed to enjoy the challenge, answering questions with wit and cogency. "This is a guy who could succeed as a politician anywhere," I thought to myself. "It drives you crazy," he says. "It's a mixture of depression and anger. After a while you feel like you cannot breathe. Your body starts to shut down. Every day is the same. It's like time has stopped." At first glance, the parallels are striking. Chairman Mao, as he was known, was the defining political figure of 20th Century China. He ran the Communist Party - and the country - from the republic's founding in 1949 until the day he died in 1976. No other Chinese leader has since come close. Until now. "The policies that Xi has applied - the re-education camps - it's about making them more Chinese than Uyghur," Mr McGregor says. "It's cultural genocide." 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.