“In Beijing there are more than ten million commuters crossing the city every day, along with tens of thousands of trucks bringing in food, and bringing out incredible amounts of garbage. When you put all these problems together, it’s impossible to do it without a powerful government,” he said, adding, “We must understand ourselves. We mustn’t ignore what’s special about us. In sixty years we have become the second-largest economy in the world—maybe the first, depending on how you measure it—and in that that time, we never colonized anyone.”
