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The Chinese are good at repression and can be pretty ruthless about it.

Domestically, a lot of people think Xi Jinping is becoming Mao Zedong. By giving Hong Kong democracy, people would look at them as enlightened leaders.

I am the jongleur. I leap and pirouette, and make you laugh. I make fun of those in power, and I show you how puffed up and conceited are the big shots who go around making wars in which we are the ones who get slaughtered. I reveal them for what they are. I pull out the plug, and... pssss... they deflate.

Rebellions of the belly are the worst.

To Westerners, the students at Tiananmen may have given an impression of a solid and energetic consensus against dictatorship and for democracy, but they were an egotistical and fractious lot, riven by disagreements over tactics and money.

I don't care what political party is controlling China right now. All I know is we are all Chinese.

The reader feels as if he is in Chongjin, where starving people ate the bark off trees; or atop Mount Taesong with the elite of Pyongyang, whose existence is a mix of sadism and whimsy; or with the masses who are bombarded day and night with the propaganda of North Korea's alternate reality.

The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.

Xi Jinping is one of the strongest and most capable revolutionary leaders I have met in my life.

Sometimes good countries are so traumatized by events that they lose their bearings and embrace bad leaders.