The eyes of the world are riveted on Beijing where the Communist Party is holding its Congress after five years. President Xi, in a marathon speech, laid out the roadmap for China to become the number one Global Power. He made two important points couched in the rhetoric of supporting world peace. Xi outlined that China will never give up its rights and asserted that the Communist party would control the army. This is ominous as China has a dispute with all its neighbors like India, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam and South Korea. China also claims the entire South China Sea and vast areas of India's Arunachal Pradesh, which it refers to as southern Tibet, CNN reported.

Mao Tse Tung

China became aggressive after Mao Tse Tung took over as the dictator in 1949. He was a ruthless man and executed millions of Chinese in his quest for total power.This stood him in good stead as he could lay the foundation of a powerful military. He also gave priority to Atomic weapons and their development and surprisingly the US allowed the nuclear program to carry on.

Five decades later President Xi laid down the roadmap for becoming the number one power in the globe. In a speech lasting over three hours, the Chinese leader said that China will uphold world peace but will not allow its legitimate rights and interests to be denied to it. The fact is, China has no friends among its immediate neighbors and has disputes with almost all of them.

From his speech, it is clear that China will not back down on any of its claims. With a powerful military with global reach and the fact that Xi has consolidated his power, could well lead to a threat to world peace.

Weak China

For long periods in their history, the Chinese were weak and their military was incompetent, resulting in defeats.

Portions of China were occupied by western powers and almost the entire North China was occupied by Japan where a puppet regime was fostered on the Chinese. This period rankles in the Chinese psyche and they wish to erase this memory.

Future

China is now in an aggressive phase and intent on being the number one power in the world.

China may very well succeed but there is a fly in the ointment. China is a one-party totalitarian state where there is no individual freedom for the common man. No elections are held and a monolith dictatorship where power is concentrated in the hands of a few is the order of the day. We have seen that throughout history totalitarian states from Sparta, to Germany and Russia collapsed. The possibility that China could implode from inside is not something beyond the realm of possibility