Just the other day, China’s Dictator-for-Life, 习近平 (Xi Jinping), arranged a massive demonstration commemorating the founding of 中国共产党, the Chinese Communist Party.
The CCP was founded in Shanghai (which, in its profile, looks far more capitalistic than Gotham, the Windy City, or LA); and if any AP fans like good fiction, and if they have French (like your solitary reporter), they should read Andre Malraux’s classic, La Condition Humaine (Man’s Fate), which is about what happened in Shanghai in 1921.
See, Karl Marx assumed that the Proletariat would arise and overthrow capitaliist nations in industrialized Western European nations, but he got that wrong. Ask Lenin and Stalin.
Also ask 毛泽东 (Chairman Mao), the guy who led his fellow Chinese Communists on the Long March and who defeated the Kuomintang and the Japanese in 1945 and then marched into Beijing on October 1, 1949. Mao welcomed R Milhous Nixon when Tricky Dick made his history-making trip to Beijing in February 1972.
In that 1972 meeting, Nixon agreed with Mao that Taiwan is part of China.
That was a big deal.
Xi has already terrorized all the residents of Hong Kong, and he is conspicuously eager to force Taiwan’s President, Tsai Ing-wen, to abdicate and lead her nation’s people to Complete Submission to Dictator Xi.
So we dispatched our Seoul-based associate solitary reporter, Ko Il-sun, to Xi’s palatial residence.
“Mr. Chairman,” Ko began, “how soon do you plan to drop more than a few of your nukes onto Taipei?”
“Go away.”
“Yes, Mr. Chairman, I will, but can you tell our worldwide readership of Apocryphal Press about your intentions with respect to Singapore, where Chinese is one of the recognized languages?”
“Get out of here, you pest, but I know that though you are Korean, you are also a close personal friend of President Biden.”
“Don’t you dare say a word, but I am both the Emperor of China in modern garb, as well as a true imperialist.”
“I’m actually a capitalist and if you tell anyone what I just said I’m going to send you to one of my my re-education camps with the Uyghers in Xinjiang.”
“But since you asked, on behalf of your apocryphal newspaper, eventually I will send as many of my warships to Singapore as I feel like it, and then see what Singapore’s President, Halimah Yacob, has to say."
"By the way, Mr. Ko, speaking of Yacob, have you seen the gorgeous French-Swiss actress, Irene Jacob, in the art movie Red? If so, please ask your friend President Biden to introduce her to me.”