‘Neither Taiwan nor strategic arms are a hot campaign topic, and China is not yet at the forefront of public consciousness. To ensure America’s eventual strategy is workable, political leaders need to debate the challenges so citizens can appreciate the implications of the choices they will have to make.’

‘While there are murmurs of opposition, the historic plenary session would suggest that the future is in Xi’s hands. However, when politics is so deeply personalised and centralised, there is only one person to blame if things go wrong. Unless, of course, we get a new resolution on history that tells us who led the party astray, despite Xi’s earnest attempts to keep policy on the straight and narrow.’

Forget Evergrande and the energy crunch. After the recent flurry of alarming headlines, here’s the question I get most often these days from CEO’s and institutional investors: Will China invade Taiwan in the next few years?

‍‘Over the next six months or more, the energy crunch in China will be an even bigger challenge than Evergrande. Will make the Evergrande problem look tiny and has huge global implications. The lights go out in China!’ one experienced and very well-respected reader of long residence in China wrote to me in response the last issue on Evergrande.