Your last point is exactly what I mentioned on this forum a few weeks ago. I admire Chinese leaders restrain and their desire to grow peacefully. To be honest the CCP might be an authoritarian party but since maos death and Deng Xiaopings pragmatic policies of “it doesn’t matter whether the cat is black and white as long as it catches mice and keeping your head down and bidding your time “ Chinese leaders have followed his ideology very successfully. However, I believe the gloves have come off since 2014/2016. The US is now focused on stopping China (which makes sense, it’s nothing personal, since even china was replaced by India or Japan, they will be treated the same way) from challenging her number 1 position and standing in the world. china might not have that intention but the mere fact they are growing too big for the US is in itself a crime already since the is automatically seen a threat to US supremacy. So make no mistake the US will do everything she can to slow or ideally stop this growth trajectory. A conflict is not out of the question actually.
I do believe the CCP is not spending enough militarily to be honest. China should have almost twice what they have/are spending today. The mere fact that many US leaders and military officials even talk of possible war and how to fight and win it against China says a lot. It means they still see the PLA/PLAN as nowhere near the US firepower and capabilities and think on the event of a war they can win if the USA focuses all its mind/resources in that war. This is very very dangerous, since as I said weeks ago, China has failed to established a quasi deterrence and equilibrium militarily against the US. This is unlike the Soviet Union which for all her ills had established a quasi potent deterrence against the US and entire West(and her allies) who back then were even far stronger /powerful than today. So you hardly ever saw any US/western leader talk about a war with the Soviet Union , it was basically unthinkable in their minds since they knew it was a MAD no question about that .
So they avoided a direct confrontation at all cost. It’s not something they even wanted to imagine or entertain for a minute . Reason they had mutual talks and agreements in stabilizing their relationships and being careful in not crossing the Soviet unions core interests/red lines.
However this is not the case with China to be honest. china is still seen as a major power but one who is not powerful enough militarily to be peer of the US and so their red lines can often be crossed even by smaller countries much less bigger powers. China has failed to established that deterrence to be honest, which makes the likelihood of a war and miscalculation in future actually more likely which will cost the country far more than what she is trying to save today(which is rational since they want to focus on economy which I admire, but situation has changed a lot this past years/decade).
So prevention is always better than cure as they say.So I will say that’s one aspect the party could do better, even though they have building up at a decent pace this past years. But it’s still nowhere near enough to be honest, especially looking at the threat and hostile powers they face at their doorsteps (not even far away).
