I am curious how this will play out. How does starting a war with your largest economic market help you in the long run? If the US and Europe stop buying from China it will end their economy. Do they have enough customers in Russia, India, unaligned countries?
Sad to say but I understand them. They don't want to end up like the young Yugoslavian Republic, weak and shattered for ever because of US "interventionism"
Wasn’t it more like they got soft after Mao even Deng?
They used to have hotwars with Vietnam, skirmishes with Russia and India. They’d send brigades to the countryside to engage in community driven building of whatever, backyard smelters, canal digging, earthworks, etc. they’d let up a few decades, but people are getting too bourgeois for their own good and need some taste of country proletariat.
> little to no history of conquering other countries for centuries.
Tibet would like a word.
> They will not try to attack Taiwan after the way the world reacted to the invasion of Ukraine.
They may attack Taiwan if Ukraine falls. That would reveal the limits of the world's ability or endurance at supporting such countries. (Except for the economic sanctions. China might think twice about those.)
