Eyck Freymann

So that's one reason for patience.

But as his preparations proceed, I think he's getting more confident.

It's a whole bunch of factors at once.

Xi Jinping has overseen a transformation in the social contract in China, from development to ideology and national security.

From the anti-corruption campaign, to his ideological rectification campaigns, to rewriting the history textbooks, to taking communist party cadres to historical sites to study points of hardship in party history, Xi Jinping uses this term struggle to describe what the party should do.

And he has told young people that can't find work that they should eat bitterness.

The idea being you should tough it out.

We are a nation striving for national rejuvenation.

National rejuvenation means rising to the height of human achievement in every human endeavor.

And to do that, we're going to work hard and we're going to make some sacrifices.

And he has tightened surveillance.

He has tightened discipline that allows him to run this regime according to a very different set of rules through coercion.

And that means we have to assume that China's tolerance for economic pain has increased.

Now, at some point there's a limit.

If the financial system were just to implode under the threat of sanctions or because there's just mass capital flight, because no investor wants to be stuck in illiquid assets in China if the US and China are headed to war,

Yes, there's possible that China could suffer a sudden black swan collapse, but I think that's not base case.

And I have a work that I describe in a lot of detail in the book about how over the last 10 years, China has been systematically building shock absorbers into its financial system to make it more likely to survive the gut punch of the imposition of sanctions.

And the fact that Russia's financial system

which lacked many of these advantages, was able to steady itself after the imposition of sanctions is, I think, an encouraging sign.

Just a couple of numbers to bring this home.