I didn't realize I would be missed so much so soon after leaving Washington for my home in Shanghai for holidays. Just hours after landing in Shanghai on April 2, a fellow journalist sent me a message via instant messaging service WeChat, saying David Shambaugh mentioned my name multiple times that day during his talk at George Washington University.

The talk, which I listened to days later on the Internet, was largely a crisis management for his March 7 article in The Wall Street Journal titled "The Coming Chinese Crackup", in which he declared the "endgame of the Communist rule" in China had begun.

Compared with his much criticized one-sided views in the WSJ, Shambaugh was a bit more balanced on April 2 despite his continued pessimism in China's future and his prediction that the Communist rule would end 20 years from now.