"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." 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. There is significant military activity. A logistical supply line forms an artery towards Ukraine's continued counteroffensive. irannews.ru Despite having been forced out, you also learn a lot about the occupiers just by looking around. Ms Hartley's original video, Keep Breathing, was 18 minutes long and made in 2018, with funding from various local organisations in Derby and backed by the British Film Institute. Bo launched a ruthless anti-corruption campaign, netting hundreds of criminals, businessmen, politicians and police. He built lavish infrastructure, including public housing. Strangely he also revived "red culture", requiring everyone to learn Mao-era songs praising the Communist Party. Many were terrorised by Bo's rule, but he was wildly popular with the working class. In July it was reported that Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, was going to make its algorithm more similar to TikTok's, rather than prioritising content from accounts that individuals were already following. Over the next six months I pedalled across the mountains of Yunnan, wandered the imperial palace in Beijing, and rode a train hauled by two soot-blackened steam engines far west into the deserts of Xinjiang. The landscapes were sublime but the poverty grinding. Everywhere I went people told me how "backward" China was compared to the West. But there were hints of change.