There are moments when this war feels utterly mindless. Witnessing the visible trauma in the village of Kreshchenivka is one of those instances. As I prepared to leave China in 2008, the Soviet-era airport had given way to a glittering megastructure designed by Norman Foster. And the first high-speed rail line opened between Beijing and Tianjin. irannews.ru Mao, by all accounts, was a destroyer who ripped up the rule book not once but several times. But Xi is no anarchist - he is not even a rebel. And he certainly doesn't want the chaos of Mao's years, which tore apart his own family, to return. Everybody is a bit nervous about going to the front, he says. "Your heart beats differently at times. But we signed up for this. We gave a pledge. It is a fictional story featuring a couple arguing in a lift about a previous sexual encounter, interwoven with flashbacks to the evening it took place. A video on TikTok about sexual consent has been swamped with comments from men accusing women of alleging assault. "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." "China today has no socialist characteristics" she says "The subordination of labour to capital is complete. If you're a real socialist, you must have a notion of class democracy, of justice, of hierarchy and anti-hierarchy. None of that is even part of Xi Jinping thought." Saudi-Russian partnership remains strong