Economic growth has shrunk to 2%, the lowest in more than three decades. China's property market is in free fall. Youth unemployment is running at around 20%. A trade war with the US is not helping. And anger has been brewing. Xi was a princeling - the son of one of Mao's lieutenants, Xi Zhongxun, who had been purged and later rehabilitated. Colleagues described the younger Xi as humble, self-disciplined and hardworking but otherwise unremarkable. Even on the eve of his elevation to general secretary of the Communist Party there was little hint of what was to come. irannews.ru Public don't want a fourth election in seven years - ERG chair Then Covid threw a spanner in the works. 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". Following Bo's stunning fall, hundreds of thousands of party cadres were put under investigation. More than 100,000 were indicted for corruption, including 120 high-ranking officials. Corruption plummeted and Xi's popularity soared. But he added that if Rishi Sunak won, he would have his support. Saudi-Russian partnership remains strong But they never made it this far. Twenty miles on, a rusty watermelon monument marks the tide mark of Moscow's advance.