After the Politburo meeting concluded, Chen Ke convened a smaller meeting. The attendees were three "young" comrades, along with the two veteran comrades, Qi Huishen and Chen Tianhua. Following Shang Yuan and Zhang Yu's withdrawal from the front lines, the 61-year-old Chen Tianhua's health had also developed issues. Within the 5+2 Politburo Standing Committee, nearly half of the members would be stepping down in the blink of an eye. Although Ren Guopei was the youngest, he was highly regarded as the candidate to succeed Chen Tianhua in party affairs.

"Chairman Chen, you seem to have always been afraid of the United States," Li Runshi said to Chen Ke, indifferent to the changes in status and position.

Chen Ke nodded and replied, "Yes, I am very afraid of the United States. If China were to challenge Britain alone in the Western Pacific, I would definitely have a chance of winning. With the areas China currently controls, if we were attacked by both Britain and the United States simultaneously, I would still have more than a fifty percent chance of winning. However, in the process of liberating the entire Western Pacific, if we were to fight against both Britain and the United States at the same time, I wouldn't have much of a chance. I can tell you all now just how powerful China actually is."

"How powerful China is"—this phrase itself was enough to ignite the passion of young people, and Chen Ke was very confident about this. In the 21st century, China finally fully adopted the block construction method for shipbuilding. That is, ship sections were pre-fabricated, welded on dry land, and finally, the ship was launched for fitting out. The United States launched a ten-thousand-ton ship every few days at the peak of World War II using this production process. China could be considered to have mastered this method, and this was based on less than 30 years of industrial accumulation in New China.

Chen Ke had dragged every industry in China to a level that was extremely advanced for 1936. What was advanced were the methods and ideas of organizing production, and what was advanced was "grasping" the direction of future development.

This was not without hidden dangers. The biggest hidden danger was that China's industrial accumulation was insufficient. To put it more bluntly, there had been too few failures. The process of a person's maturity is just as Mencius said: "When Heaven is about to confer a great office on any man, it first exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews and bones with toil. It exposes his body to hunger, and subjects him to extreme poverty. It confounds his undertakings. By all these methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies." Only after suffering countless hardships, enduring countless sins, and experiencing one failure after another can one finally "move their heart and endure their nature, and increase what they cannot do."

Therefore, almost everyone instinctively wants to avoid this process and find a path that leads straight to victory without making mistakes. If one has to choose between a path straight to victory and a path without mistakes or suffering, the vast majority of people would choose the path without mistakes or suffering.

"So China is very powerful now because we have strong production capabilities and advanced production models. When China's electronic technology and computer technology achieve further breakthroughs, we will be even more powerful, and our production capacity will be more than ten times stronger than it is now. Similarly, such production capabilities and production models will definitely make us suffer greatly," Chen Ke concluded after introducing China's various strengths.

The old guys were already used to Chen Ke's predictions; China had come this far step by step. If Chen Ke said China could go to the moon in a few years, they wouldn't doubt it.

Chen Ke continued, "What we are facing now is that the current world order is problematic. This world is still in the colonial era, and the current world order is still a colonial system. If this order is not smashed, China cannot have a bright future. But! China cannot engage in imperialism. It's not about destroying the British colonial system and replacing it with a Chinese colonial system. If imperialism were a promising path, rest assured, I would definitely lead the comrades to stride boldly onto the path of imperialism. In fact, imperialism has no future. What future is there for a system of internal oppression and external plunder?!"

"Then what is the relationship between Japan and China's future strategy?" Li Runshi was still able to grasp Chen Ke's train of thought.

"Given Japan's current sorry state, what kind of result can the revolution have? My personal view is this: Japan will at most come up with militarism or a feudal socialism. Their ideal is just to become a powerful imperialist country and get a share of the pie in the new colonial system established in Asia." Chen Ke rarely used such emotional language as "sorry state" to describe Japan. "I am very hesitant about my attitude towards Japan because Japan's ceiling is very low. Unless China annexes Japan and completely changes Japan's reality, only then will the thinking of individual Japanese people change. Otherwise, as long as Japan is still an island nation, an island nation with scarce resources and a large population, it cannot have any fundamental changes."

One of the common characteristics of rulers is extreme realism. "Don't mention trust, it hurts feelings"—this is not condescending arrogance. For rulers, this is sincere and warm truth. Anyone who has truly done things and completed work knows how unreliable they actually are. Every link they have worked on was stumbling and imperfect. Walking to the finish line with great difficulty requires not only one's own efforts but also some luck.

Chen Ke was facing top leaders who knew their own human weaknesses deeply through constant work and labor. For example, Li Runshi knew very well that he was easily influenced by the outside world, so he simply read books on the main road when he was young. This was not Li Runshi trying to show off how much he loved learning, but to overcome his weakness of being easily influenced; he tried various methods.

Ren Guopei's attitude was "If you can walk a hundred steps, absolutely do not walk ninety-nine steps." One who travels a hundred miles is only half way there at ninety; is the last step easy to take? The joy Chen Ke felt every time he reached the destination of a hiking trip was not because he had achieved some bullshit victory, but because he had finally finished walking and could lie down and rest for a while. He didn't have to hang there in the middle of the road, not touching the sky or the ground. As for success, that was only something said when bragging. As for being on the road, because the heart rate accelerated, the pressure on the blood vessels increased, the feet were hot and burning, constantly bearing weight, making the tendons painful, and often feeling like the bones were about to break—what joy was there to speak of? But for people who are constantly moving forward, as long as the bones are not really broken, they have to continue walking. They have to engage in a tragic ideological struggle against the irritability and anger caused by various physical discomforts.

Before a leader leads others, he must first become his own master. In this process, they deeply know the unreliability of human nature, including their own.

Therefore, in front of these comrades, Chen Ke spoke very frankly. He did not mean to mock Japan maliciously. Chen Ke was only making a realistic judgment based on Japan's development trajectory over the past hundred years. "A frog in a well cannot discuss the ocean, for it is limited by its space; a summer insect cannot discuss ice, for it is limited by its time. Japan simply does not have the opportunity to gain the chance to dominate the world. Without such an experience, they cannot produce a correct understanding. My lack of confidence in the Japanese revolution is based on this reason."

The comrades could understand Chen Ke's words. Everyone had done practical work for many years, and true understanding is built on shared experiences. China had experienced a social stage where the people of the whole country wanted to overthrow the imperial power and establish a republic. Even so, Yuan Shikai still delusionally wanted to be emperor from time to time. After the founding of New China, there were still people in the corners who "proclaimed themselves emperor." The Japanese revolution had to use the name of the Japanese Emperor, which was really too low a level.

Chen Ke continued, "The revolutionary demands of the Japanese people are very low, and their class consciousness is also very limited. I think it is not yet the time for China to intervene in such a revolution. If China forcibly transforms Japan, the Spanish Civil War is proof. When foreign countries think that China is only abiding by the current colonial system's way of doing things and relying on force to annex some land, they actually have a common standard. They think China is a threat, but they don't think China is an enemy. If China wants to use force to forcibly promote socialist revolutions in other countries, we will immediately become the public enemy of the world."

No one in the meeting raised the point of whether those Japanese revolutionaries would be pitiful; that was a point of view that only the petty bourgeoisie would raise. Since they decided to revolt, they naturally had to have the revolutionary consciousness to shed their blood and sacrifice their lives. for the revolution, the people's revolutionary needs are the key to everything. The reason why Chen Ke had always been very low-key about the Japanese revolution was based on this situation.

In the end, the comrades reached a consensus that the Japanese revolution still needed to be "closely watched."