the vietnam war ended 50 years ago, son.
I am intrigued by your arc of history theory, but I am more interested in current facts. china's demographic advantage against the united states peaked and is now shrinking. besides that, their labor pool is rapidly becoming a liability instead of an asset. under what theory do see china reversing these fatal trends?
none of this is to say china will become WEAK. in fact it will grow, and become richer, and more mighty militarily. but it is absolutely becoming weaker, demographically and technologically and militarily, relative to the US as time goes on. the CCP's own internal analysis shows this. they discuss it openly and seek solutions from within and without china. but the fact remains, china becomes more disadvantaged by waiting. which means they have already, quite wisely, chosen peace and cooperation for the next century. (in no small part out of the desire to keep buying our rice and take the edge off the inevitable malthusian catastrophe of losing 1 billion manufacturing jobs over the next few decades.)