I must say, while I hold you in high regard, I cannot agree with this viewpoint. The European and American markets are crucial trading partners for China. This is not because China is weak, but precisely because China is the world's largest industrial nation. Its production capacity has far surpassed that of all industrial entities that have ever existed in history. Even without being fully mobilized, this immense capacity has already made China the factory supplying the entire world. If China relied solely on domestic demand, it would be insufficient to absorb such massive industrial output. What China needs now is, on one hand, to expand the scale of its domestic market demand, and on the other hand, it requires greater market access from Europe and the United States. When the initiative shifts to China, the vast disparity in production capacity could swiftly overwhelm Western markets with Chinese exports. This would force Western nations to become dependent on China—the world's factory—across all sectors, including high technology. China would then secure complete dominance in every industrial domain.
No, dude, think about the core meaning of the economy. When all civility and artificial institutions are done away with, what is it? It's a matter of producing goods to sustain and embellish the lives of your citizens. Money has no intrinsic value. Selling your goods for their money is only meaningful if you use that money of theirs to buy their things for your own use. The main thing that China buys from the West is technology. The equation used to balance as China trading everyday goods like toys, washing machines, etc... for high tech goods like cars, planes, industrial robots, etc... As their technology slips and ours overtakes, we need that import less and less but they need our exports more and more, expanding to the things we used to need them for. Now they still need us for their toys and kitchen appliances and easy bullshit but now they also need us for our EV cars, computer chips, cellphones, industrial robots, etc... What do we need from them? Barely anything and waning. So if we don't want anything from them, what are we selling them things for? Just their money? It's just decorative paper! That equation no longer balances. Our citizens are working to give them better lives, trading for freely-printed decorative paper and these whiney little bitches are complaining that we're being unfair to them! Cut the relationship! Chinese can enjoy what we make; they can cover themselves in money they print. See who's better off.
This doesn't apply to countries in the global south where we can get raw materials from in trade for our manufactured goods. We can sell for their currency to buy their resources and they can sell for the RMB for things that modernize and enhance their lives. Win-win.
Deterrence is never guaranteed, especially when facing an irrational and desperate declining superpower. The risk of losing one’s existing prestige and status is much greater incentives to fight than trying to gain something one never had. It is for this reason why conservatives whites in America fought against every attempt to pass civil rights laws guaranteeing racial equality for a 100 years from the Civil War until 1965. And it is for the same reason why it is so hard to tax the rich in liberal democracies with institutions that tend to protect existing elites and power bases. Apply such logics to international politics, it is why Britain would fight so hard to prevent the rise of Germany through a national strategic gamble (joining WWI) whilst overlooking the US. In sum, status quo powers (both domestically and international politics) tend to fight to the last tooth and nails to preserve their privileges even when their realistic material power could no longer support their desires. Compromise would mean losing everything bit by bit and fade into the flood of history.
OK cool, so I guess in the end, America just have to accept defeat or we can all nuke out and start over. America's biggest advantage was a higher starting point than China. We all know who moves faster. So I'm cool with starting on the same line as them any day. If their will for dominance is iron than our will to break it is steel.