Xi pushed away from Deng’s more passive strategy, he went too hard and gave the US to align everyone else defensively, Ukraine was a lucky break for that too.

This is geopolitical musical chairs and the music has mostly stopped, Xi needed 10 more years to get his navy in the position it needed to be, now he’s caught with 1 broken ally and the rest of his region not looking that friendly. And his economy is collapsing.

This was a very lucky break for the west all-told, I get Chinese engineers looking back with rose-colored glasses but I suspect they’ll regret that soon, China now isn’t Hu’s China of the early 2010s, things are going to get extremely ugly over the next 5 years. The west will have it rough too, but shouldn’t be nearly as bad, Chinese real estate is… truly incomprehensible.