The Kremlin blazed with lights. The senior members of the Soviet Central Committee attending the banquet looked radiant, clinking glasses and expressing their condolences and regrets over He Rui's passing. Yet the genuine smiles on their faces were proof enough of their internal joy.

Few things could bring the Soviet leadership to a true consensus, but He Rui's death had achieved a rare emotional alignment within the Party. While the He Rui government had not been hostile to the USSR, it had certainly exerted a crushing weight of pressure upon them.

Stalin himself couldn't quite tell if he felt a touch of peer sympathy or merely a simple lament for the transience of life. In any case, he could not bring himself to join the revelry. Fortunately, the Soviet elite held Stalin in great awe; seeing the General Secretary in low spirits, no one dared approach to risk his displeasure. Stalin was thus left alone amidst the noise to contemplate the path ahead.

He Rui possessed an insight into international affairs that Stalin found intimidating. Although He Rui did not use this insight for petty schemes, he had a way of ensuring that the Soviet Union invariably chose the direction he had planned for them.

Stalin did not believe He Rui's successor would possess the same strength. At the very least, upon hearing of He Rui's death, he hoped that Li Runshi would not match his predecessor's strategic judgment. But if Li were indeed inferior, the USSR would have to utilize diplomatic channels to ensure China understood and accepted the Soviet Union's upcoming military actions and geopolitical constructions.

Molotov entered the main hall. He had just finished receiving the Chinese Ambassador to the USSR in a small side room, away from the festive atmosphere. After expressing condolences, Molotov had conveyed the Soviet desire to send a special envoy to China to pay respects, as well as an expectation that the new Chinese President, Li Runshi, would visit the Soviet Union at an appropriate time.

Having concluded the diplomatic meeting, Molotov hurried over to report the results to Stalin. Molotov was no drinker, and Stalin was in no mood for spirits, so the two retired to another small room with glasses of juice to talk.

The Chinese Ambassador's acceptance of the special envoy confirmed to Stalin that Li Runshi had no immediate intention of downgrading Sino-Soviet relations. Stalin turned to Molotov and said, "Send Comrade Kirov to China."

Molotov immediately voiced his total agreement. According to Chinese cultural tradition, Kirov—widely regarded as Stalin's successor—was the perfect choice to represent both the Party and the Soviet government.

This was a cultural difference. If the Soviets were looking at China, the arrival of He Rui’s deputy would not be seen as a gesture of immense significance. Molotov was already certain that Stalin had not even considered the matter of a successor; Kirov was a close comrade-in-arms, but he was not the heir apparent.

Of course, such a judgment was only for private thought. Molotov did not dare voice it, nor even hint at it.

Beyond sending an envoy, Molotov suggested dispatching high-level diplomats to France. During the First World War, Tsarist Russia had possessed the Baltics, Finland, and Poland, sharing a direct border with the Second Reich. France also bordered Germany, allowing the two to easily align their interests and form an alliance to pinch the Germans from both sides.

Now that the USSR had retaken the Baltics and turned Poland into a sphere of influence, they could once again cooperate with France against Germany. Through such cooperation, the Soviet Union could increase its influence over the French. Molotov believed that while France might swallow the loss of its colonies, it would never accept being controlled by China. In the process of European resistance to Chinese dominance, the Soviet Union could provide significant assistance.

Stalin approved the suggestion. This was not because He Rui’s death had led him to underestimate China; rather, the Soviet Union still viewed itself as a European power and did not wish to see the continent controlled by an outside force. This consideration had also played a role in the previous Soviet-German peace.

Once the banquet ended, Commissioner Kirov received his orders. He accepted the mission immediately and, the following day, led a team onto a flight from Moscow to Harbin in northern China.

The aircraft was a C919—a civil airliner powered by jet engines. Although Kirov was a frequent flyer, he was still staggered by the powerful thrust of the takeoff. When he learned that the C919 could maintain a steady speed of 840 kilometers per hour during cruise, he marveled at the sheer speed of jet travel.

Spending fourteen hours on a plane was exhausting. But to travel from Moscow to the Chinese capital in just fourteen hours made the weary journey feel worthwhile.

The Li Runshi government provided no special treatment for Kirov. Although a meeting with the President was arranged, it was scheduled for only ten minutes.

Kirov felt he understood the reason. Beyond any disappointment China might feel toward the USSR, Li Runshi was incredibly busy. Among those coming to pay respects were representatives from over twenty nations liberated from colonial rule. While the borders in Africa were not yet fully drawn, the few nations that had been established sent delegates or their supreme leaders directly. Li Runshi had to meet with dozens of leaders in a very short time; ten minutes for Kirov was a sign of considerable importance.

The formal, polite exchanges took up about a minute. Kirov brought several questions from Stalin, but beyond those, he wished to communicate something of his own.

Many in the Soviet leadership truly believed that China was not a socialist state, but rather a capitalist nation led by a bourgeois reformist party. Kirov had once thought this a reasonable assessment, but he no longer shared it.

According to Lenin’s political theories, one hallmark of a socialist state was that it did not need to worry about the problem of industrial development. Marxism was, to a large extent, a doctrine for the social transformation of industrial nations; the inherent flaws of the capitalist system would severely impede the development of productive forces.

Once a capitalist nation transitioned into socialism through revolution, at least theoretically, the problem of developing productivity should no longer exist. The primary contradiction of a socialist state should be distribution—or, in He Rui’s terms, the trade-off between efficiency and equity.

Present-day China was undoubtedly the world’s most powerful industrial nation and one of its most technologically advanced. If China could not be called socialist, then no other nation had the right to the title. Stalin would certainly not allow Kirov to ask this question, yet Kirov was intensely interested.

The meeting was scheduled just before lunch, which Kirov found ideal. Although the state banquet would be shared with all the other foreign representatives, he would certainly get more than his ten minutes of face time. Even a single extra minute was precious in such high-level dialogue.

As rehearsed, the ceremonial greetings took one minute. Stalin’s questions centered on the definition of Sino-Soviet spheres of influence in Europe and mutual coordination in the final destruction of Nazi Germany to avoid misunderstandings. Li Runshi displayed considerable restraint, answering with an attitude of cooperation rather than confrontation.

With one minute remaining, Kirov asked: "I have heard that China's latest urban designs are based on the standard of private cars being the primary mode of transportation for the people. I wonder what stage of socialist development China believes it has entered when every citizen can afford their own car?"

Li Runshi had not expected Kirov to ask this, let alone that his entry point would be the standards of China’s ongoing massive infrastructure development. For a moment, he was at a loss for an answer.

The standard of every household having at least one motor vehicle for travel had been proposed by He Rui during his life. In Li Runshi’s view, this standard was somewhat too far ahead of its time. He wasn't alone; a significant portion of the central leadership shared this doubt. Yet, given He Rui's prestige, this "outrageous" standard had been approved. After all, He Rui had compressed 150 years of Western development into thirty—an achievement that, in hindsight, was even more outrageous.

While Li Runshi was not about to immediately overturn He Rui's standards, he felt that if they proved impossible to implement, he would have to relax them to achieve a more universal equity.

Kirov’s inquiry struck him with considerable force. He hadn't expected Kirov to place such importance on He Rui’s set standards. Soon, Li recalled Stalin’s famous remark: "Beef and potatoes is the communist life."

Ten years ago, many party cadres still believed that "upstairs and downstairs, electric lights and telephones" was the standard for communism.

In 1945, even as China waged the Second World War, its deployment capacity had sent millions of troops to North America and armed millions of WPLA soldiers in Europe. Domestically, the infrastructure standards for major cities already included apartment buildings with elevators and underground parking. Cities featured subways, underground tunnels, and elevated highways. If one assumed every family had a car, such a massive and costly infrastructure was necessary just to handle the driving and parking.

He Rui had said that if the infrastructure were insufficient, the roads of the future would become the world's largest parking lots.

Previously, Li Runshi had never seen a world where a single city held hundreds of thousands of private cars. Over the past year, living in such a city, he had discovered He Rui’s words to be true. To make getting in and out of their vehicles convenient, people truly did park them all along the roadsides.

With a car for travel, people suddenly found themselves unable to endure even a few steps on foot. This "inertia" had initially disappointed Li Runshi. But after he learned to drive himself and began driving to and from work, he truly discovered that this inertia was far more stubborn than he had imagined. After a month of walking ten minutes from the parking lot to his office and another ten back, even Li found himself reaching his limit.

When cars became a part of daily life rather than a tool for showing off wealth, Li Runshi had initially struggled to grasp Kirov’s question.

After a dozen seconds of reflection and organizing his thoughts, he answered: "The purpose of this standard is to meet the daily needs of the people and to reduce the burden of travel. If you are referring to the elevation of the people's consumption capacity, then it is not a standard, but a dynamic process. One would have to go back to 1927, when China began popularizing the use of bicycles through installment loans."

Kirov was intensely interested in China’s economic development and followed up: "If China does not advance its productive forces through set standards, then what model are your five-year plans and social development outlines based upon?"

Hearing this, Li Runshi became quite interested in Kirov's level of understanding. The Soviet model truly had a "plan"—from wage standards to social welfare, they meticulously formulated a series of benchmarks. Especially after obtaining vacuum-tube computers from China, their calculations had become more comprehensive and seemingly more scientific.

However, Li Runshi’s internal assessment of the Soviet economic construction logic was "unintelligible nonsense" (不知所云). It wasn't that he didn't understand the Soviet model; rather, even with his own radical thinking, he found the Soviet path too rigid and aggressive.

Kirov was one of the few in the Soviet leadership brave enough to ask critical questions directly. Li Runshi decided to use simple and clear language to explain the internal logic and methodology of the economic construction begun in the He Rui era.

"The Chinese economy strives to build a completely new model of industrialized life," Li explained. "The characteristic of this model is that the state provides the fundamental guarantees. By vigorously enhancing the people's learning capacity and promoting the domestic diffusion of technology, the state allows the industrial fields in which private capital can invest to constantly expand. This creates competitive environments within every specific niche. This overall environment is what has promoted the rapid development of the Chinese economy."

Seeing that his questions had indeed struck a chord with Li Runshi, Kirov continued with the issue he cared about most: "With China achieving a full industrial chain, how do you avoid the various problems that arise from it?"

Li Runshi never hid his views. Seeing Kirov's genuine interest and the fact that he had clearly studied the Chinese model, he smiled. "Heh. We ensure competition and gradually eliminate monopolies and privileges. We use the law to resolve issues of wealth distribution and inheritance. As for illegal acts, naturally, those who should be arrested are arrested, and those who should be executed are executed. In the field of propaganda, we use the 'weapon of criticism' to constantly expose the negative effects of crime, privilege, and monopoly on society."

Kirov had studied the Chinese model closely, reading numerous government work reports and industrial development summaries. Li Runshi’s answer proved to him that Li understood He Rui’s logic, but it didn't necessarily mean Li would truly inherit it in its entirety.

Just as Kirov might be seen as the heir to Stalin’s position, he did not believe he would necessarily follow Stalin’s economic construction path to the letter.

The ten minutes had long since passed, but Kirov no longer paid it any mind. He continued: "Capitalist nations also claim to practice free competition, especially after the global crisis of 1929—they all agree that monopoly is a problem. What is the difference between the free competition in China’s model and the free competition advertised by the capitalist world?"

Li Runshi pondered for a moment before answering: "A very large portion of China’s economic activity units utilize a capital operation model. Since it is capital operation, there is no fundamental difference between China and the West regarding free competition. However, China possesses a unique factor: our massive population. Furthermore, the total population that has joined the world economic system built by China now exceeds one billion. This means the number of economic units participating in free competition is dozens of times greater than in the West.

"Quantitative change leads to qualitative change. As long as Chinese policy maintains free competition rather than advocating for monopoly, such a vast number of economic units will inevitably maintain that competition."

Kirov had not expected such an explanation. He was momentarily stunned.