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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. "Once the firing starts it's three deep breaths, a couple of swear words and you move on." Conservative MP George Freeman, who earlier pledged his support for Penny Mordaunt, says he will now be voting for Rishi Sunak to be the next prime minister. irannews.ru "Heaven is high and the emperor is far away" is an old, oft-quoted saying in China. It means there is no-one watching what you are doing. In November 2015, I took off from the Philippine Island of Palawan in a tiny single engine Cessna. Our destination was the Philippine-controlled atoll of Pagasa, 400 miles away in the middle of the South China Sea. Our plan was to pass close to a new Chinese military base, built on an artificial island atop "mischief reef". The outline of a runway and the extraordinary 9km long artificial island emerged as we approached. It was at this time - during a trade war between China and the EU over textile quotas - that I got a rare invitation to interview the commerce minister. Such interviews with top Chinese officials were excruciatingly dull, but this was the opposite. China's brashness has been driven by its extraordinary power as both the world's biggest factory and marketplace. It has so far seemed unstoppable, poised to unseat the US as the largest economy. She was inspired by a technique reportedly used in Thailand some years previously. 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.