>while China's expansion into the US went on unrestrained. If this process continued on unchecked, China would definitely replace the US as the world power.
pretty much any projection, from consevative to optimistic implies that China will replace / supplement the United States on a 'several decades+' timeframe, so the aggressive stance taken by the US on a election cycle basis strikes me as unwise. At the end of the century Asia will be the center of the world.
This is one advantage that China always had over the US, politicians in the country are able to think in 40 instead of 4 year intervals. And given that broadened context, poking the bear now simply to delay their capabilities by a few years seems like not such a good idea.
China isn't thinking 40 years out. That's the greatest myth running about China's authoritarian system. There are few governments more obsessed with day to day sentiment and short-term thinking. That's why they have to control their people so tightly and they constantly watch everything going on socially for the slightest aberration. Everything about China is at risk of implosion at all times, that's why the authorities there behave as they do (from social credit, to wiping out other cultures, to aggressively limiting social variance, to extreme debt binging, to fear of basic human rights and expression, to perpetual economic stimulus, to their hyper universal surveillence).
China talks long-term, that's it. The USSR used to talk long-term in their propaganda too, it was a fraud. Watch their actions instead. There is a mountain of evidence that they aren't actually acting long-term. See: their taking on the greatest-fastest pile of debt in world history over the last 10-15 years. They did that to satisfy extremely short-term thinking about social instability. There can be no greater example of short-term thinking for such a system, than to trade extreme debt to fake faster growth for a bit longer, rather than plotting longer term in a financially healthy manner and accepting slower growth.
In terms of being unwise. The US doesn't need foreign countries, including on trade, nearly to the extent that China desperately needs foreign trade. When ranked globally, the US is among the least trade dependent major nations, and that provides an enormous bargaining position. China derives roughly 10x the growth impulse from each dollar of US economic growth, as compared to what the US derives from China.
It is in fact wise for the US to confront China right now, precisely because the US does not need China. There are dozens of countries that net can replace much of the manufacturing that China handles for the US today. China knows this, it's why they've responded very carefully to US tariffs, they recognize there is a vast imbalance.
China is in a precarious position today. They have all the debt of the US, with barely any social safety net (which will make their debt, tax and budget situation far worse), bad demographics, twin deficits (trade and budget), a smaller economy that is extremely rigid and one that is prone to frequent wrecks that must be constantly corrected by the central government with large stimulus programs. The system is clearly not working very well. There's zero proof thus far that Xi's new, highly regressive system will continue on the path of long-term economic expansion and success, now that Deng's system is formally dead. They may very well crash into a wall of stagnation under the new anti-Deng, anti-liberalization approach. It'll take many years yet to find out either way. I happen to not believe the new Xi system is compatible with furthering the success that the old system produced.
To compare China to the Soviet Union seems to me very erroneous. The communist party has survived communism itself, which the Soviet Union did not manage, it has survived Deng's reforms towards a more market based economy, and now it apparently evolves into something else again, whatever that is.
So to characterise a system as rigid that has shown the ability to absorb more shocks than just about any other political system on earth and still come out intact and relatively, if not highly functional is probably a huge mistake.
And it's true that all this thought control stuff and the Xi smartphone apps aren't serious long term politics, but they're also not really evidence for the opposite. Politically China has still a lot of old cadre who thinks they can brainwash the population with Soviet era propaganda, but in contrast to the USSR I'm not sure how seriously the leadership itself takes this or merely runs with it because it's the motions you go through in these authoritarian systems.
And concerning the last part about stagnation, how often have we heard this now? China is always five years away from being five years away of succumbing to its politics. It's almost an unfalsifiable belief at this point. You say that it'll take many years to find out, but is there a point in time at which you're open to change your outlook? The issue I have with this view is that it almost feels like the roles have reversed. People in liberal democracies want to exercise foreign pressure and maintain the system solely on belief in the system itself, rather than admit that we're in a phase of competition between political systems (which ironically was supposed to be the arena where liberalism wins on merits)
pretty much any projection, from consevative to optimistic implies that China will replace / supplement the United States on a 'several decades+' timeframe, so the aggressive stance taken by the US on a election cycle basis strikes me as unwise. At the end of the century Asia will be the center of the world.
This is one advantage that China always had over the US, politicians in the country are able to think in 40 instead of 4 year intervals. And given that broadened context, poking the bear now simply to delay their capabilities by a few years seems like not such a good idea.