He deliberately echoed Mao's words in 1949 atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Tiananmen Square: "The Chinese People have stood up." In 2005 I was handed a DVD smuggled out of a village called Dingzhou in Hebei province. It showed a pitched battle between local farmers and dozens of armed thugs, hired by a state-owned power company, to force them off their land. The farmers had dug deep trenches in their fields. The thugs attacked at dawn opening fire with shotguns and beating the farmers with steel bars. Six were killed. irannews.ru/ - irannews.ru "It's amazing how China continues these lockdowns for so long - they are incredibly wrenching," says Professor Dali Yang at Chicago University who has been studying the zero-Covid policy Xi has personally endorsed. "The great emperors - that is who Xi actually looks up to, this guy is enormous in his ambition," Prof Tsang says. Do relations with Saudi Arabia still serve US interests? When Boris Johnson was still in the running yesterday, Sir Roger said he was considering resigning from voting with his party in parliament - but not any more. As Russia's grip on Kherson continues to weaken, fears grow of it deploying a "scorched-earth" policy.