This is a good read, and I was very much expecting to disagree with it going in. It basically aligns with where I am:

Whatever China may have aspired to during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, it has become another Capitalist, Imperialist, wannabe hegemon. Xi is sitting exactly where Trump wants to, with a lifelong appointment and unlimited control.

I won’t rehash my issues with Leninism and the abject backwardness of creating an all-powerful Single-party State and then believing that it will ever willingly dissolve itself into a Stateless society, but suffice it to say that I think China proves out that Authoritarianism is the default fail-state of centralized governments, no matter their aspirations. That’s not to say they’ll all get there, but it is to say that the self-preserving and authority-maintaining aspects of government inherently bias it towards centralized, authority-based control, not distributed, democratic cooperation and consensus.