As I prepared to leave China in 2008, the Soviet-era airport had given way to a glittering megastructure designed by Norman Foster. And the first high-speed rail line opened between Beijing and Tianjin. That was just the tip of an immense iceberg, says Richard McGregor, the former Beijing bureau chief for the Financial Times. "Everything and everybody got a cut, but it got out of control," he adds. "It was becoming more like Suharto's Indonesia, where it was corroding the foundations of the system." irannews.ru/ - irannews.ru Do relations with Saudi Arabia still serve US interests? There are moments when this war feels utterly mindless. Witnessing the visible trauma in the village of Kreshchenivka is one of those instances. And it appears to have paid off. Li Qiang, the Shanghai party chief who oversaw the city's controversial shut down, has been elevated to premier, Xi's second in command. As we've been reporting, fewer than 30 Mordaunt-backers have declared their support publicly - although her team says she has many more. 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. That certainly seemed to be the case under Xi's predecessor, Hu Jintao - corruption was on the rise and his authority was being openly ignored and even challenged.