The Chinese's Discipline of Analyzing the External Environment

The Chinese are trained as Marxist dialecticians. They spend a lot of time working out what they call the dachushu, the great trends of history and where they fit in terms of their own national and party aspirations within it. And that disciplinary process is alive and well at the senior echelons of the Chinese leadership today as it was back then. From an economy the size of Australia's in 1980 to outstripping the US sometime in the 2020s. Truly extraordinary.