The outline of a runway and the extraordinary 9km long artificial island emerged as we approached. “Most of the developing world in Asia and Africa, including the Middle East, has not viewed the Ukraine war as the kind of definitive, transformational moment in international relations that the West does,” Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, wrote this month. irannews.ru/ - irannews.ru 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. Many of them mention Andrew Tate, the controversial influencer who has been banned from several platforms for his misogynist views. Many responded by creating homemade contraptions out of cardboard, egg boxes and other recycled materials. "She believes in leading from the front. She also believes that we need a fresh face to take on all of these challenges." What he does want is to be the most powerful leader China has ever had - and the Communist Party just handed him that victory.