His father had taught him that habit – of rising early, of working harder than anyone else, of having more discipline than anyone else – along with so many other things. His father, who’d risen from birth as a peasant farmer to become the Party Secretary of Chongqing. His father who’d be so proud to see him here today, doing what had to be done to strengthen the nation.

Bo could hear his father’s words. “Hard work guarantees you nothing. But laziness assures failure. Work hard, or you have only yourself to blame.”

“…small student-led protests in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou,” his aide, Gao Yang, was saying, from behind him. “Mostly on university campuses. Protesting the new research restrictions, the arrests of dissidents, and the removal of Sun Liu. State Security is seeking your guidance as to response.”

Bo Jintao turned to face Gao.

The display showed images. Posters. Crowds. Small ones, really. Just dozens of people, scores, perhaps.

He caught a glimpse of a Billion Flowers sign among the others and shook his head just a fraction. So many problems to deal with. The population shrinking, crippling the supply of labor, even as the elderly expanded. The massive growth of deserts in the west, swallowing up once fertile areas, as water tables collapsed. India’s expansionist streak, its military buildup and the ring of foes it was trying to build around China with its network of so-called “unaligned states”. The Arctic bubbling methane from the trillions of tons frozen at the bottom, even as China led the push to decarbonize the world economy, those bubbles warning of an irreversibly hellish tipping point that could be just a few years away, or decades, or safely beyond the point where the planet would start cooling once again. And above all, the threat of the exponential: that one of the millions of well-funded fools flirting with doomsday technologies would go too far, letting off a virus or a nanite or an AI that could replicate and end or enslave them all.

And these naïve pups out there, in this most dangerous moment in history, wanted to replace the sanity of a few wise, steady leaders with the anarchy of more than a billion voices shouting at one another, heaving the nation to-and-fro like a vast mob.

Madness.

Bo Jintao shook his head and brought his attention back to Gao Yang.

“Are all the protests this small?” he asked.

“None are larger than a hundred, Premier,” Gao said. “Deputy State Security Minister Ho says they could be dispersed in minutes.”

Bo Jintao spooned up more congee to give himself time to think. He had to set aside his emotions. Protests were destabilizing things. Not to be desired. The masses were neither mentally nor dispositionally equipped to decide the path of the nation. That was certain. But dealing with them was a delicate matter, as he’d learned

“Information containment?” he asked.