Captain Jim Fennell

And what I think Xi did was he cleaned out the PLA, those that were party members that were going to be in this party Congress, to clean them out so that they were not

in present at the event.

So there would be no kind of event like you saw with Hu Jintao and that he could have total control over the process to be able to set the 15th five-year plan.

And so I think that's kind of where we're at.

And when it comes to the military aspect, throughout, if you go back and you follow our analysis of the Soviet Union, we always looked at leadership and intentions and we looked at capabilities.

And in this case, when you look at the PRC,

We can examine leadership.

And we had, you know, rumors from the kind of the same sources saying that Xi had a stroke over the last couple of months.

Yet we continue to see Xi very much present in the international stage.

Last week, meeting with International Women's Global Women's Forum and meeting many, many people.

So those rumors kind of don't come true.

Also,

Xi's not having control of the party.

If you go back to June and July, these rumors were existing that Xi was losing control of the PLA, yet who was leading the big PLA parade in Beijing this last month?

It was Xi.

So I would...

put that in the leadership bucket, and then in the military capabilities bucket, as I mentioned in the morning segment, we are seeing a continual uninterrupted trajectory, a strategic trend line of PLA modernization, growth in capabilities, and in expanding operations.

Now, Jim mentioned that maybe that's to show the flag and to be kind of aggressive because they got these problems at home.

It's possible.

But my assessment is, looking at their military, that this is a natural progression to meet Xi's global defense initiative, or global security initiative, that he wants to have a global military.