China is 70 years old this week. Happy fucking birthday. But its not like, ‘old China’, nice China, full of Ming Dynasties and Terracotta Warriors and inventing glasses and fireworks and all those great things they did when the women had bound feet and the men very long moustaches. No, this is 70 years of the People’s Republic of China. Since Mao Tse Tung ousted the old warlords and feudal rulers and replaced them with… with… with communism! And that is well worth a celebration in anyone’s money. The communists arrived and ‘liberated’ the entire population. Well, not exactly ‘entire’. They started with 7 of them. Counting Mao. They were ‘liberated first’. To make sure the path was safe for the other 800 million (probably; at that time). Not so they could implement the communist infrastructure, but more so they might hoover up a few national assets before the rush. But then they realised they didn’t have many assets. Just liabilities. 800 million of ’em. So they leveled the field, gave everyone a title and started the ‘cultural revolution’. Which certainly worked, as a tool for population reduction as about 3 million people disappeared and were never seen again. It involved neighbours reporting neighbours for absolutely anything that might have been ‘against the revolutionary ideals’, brothers reported sisters, no-one was safe. It was a case of ‘report or be reported’. And this was seen a ‘progress’. A vast number of the population who didn’t ‘disappear’ died of starvation in the years of famine. As the new leaders fed them political ideology instead of rice.

Fast forward and here we are. With China Nouveau. The biggest, richest, loudest, most… Chinese-est country in the world. It owns debt from virtually every major nation on the planet and you wouldn’t trust them as far as you could throw them. And their leader still looks bored. Blessed with a permanent expression of total indifference, President Xi rules the nation with an iron fist. During the celebrations in Tienanmen Square (don’t mention the deaths, they’ve been air-brushed out of history), they marched about 20 million soldiers, 100,000 tanks, they had missiles, artillery, planes, boats and bombs. All in celebration.

Which is funny. Cos you’d think a nation would choose to celebrate the good shit, the history, the achievements, the children. Rather than merely displaying its rather awesome military potential. It represents the greatest “you want some a diss???” in the history of armed warfare. It was a message to Trump. It was a note to the good citizens of Hong Kong. It was probably a hint to Russia too that there’s other big players in the game.

So we have the most populous nation on Earth run by a tyrannical Elvis-impersonator. And the most powerful nation on Earth run by a gun-crazed, half-witted Boris-impersonator. What else could we ever need.

Happy Thursday
A xxxx