I am simply reacting to events. I would love it if there was more good news! Unfortunately there is a trend this year towards the bad. But in reality I hate Gordon Chang! He is a fool.
My view is actually a very simple 4 quadrant system. 3 of the quadrants are positive/good, only one is bad.
1st quadrant: China is technologically ahead, and has good foreign relations. A perfect environment all around! China could be a world #1 superpower in this scenario.
2nd quadrant: China is technologically behind, but has good foreign relations. Still a good situation for China! It can buy the technology/tools it needs.
3rd quadrant: China is technologically ahead, but has bad foreign relations. Still good for China! It doesn't need other countries, because it is the most advanced itself.
4th quadrant: China is technologically behind, and has bad foreign relations. This is the only situation I don't think is so good. China is still behind the West in technology, yet it has bad foreign relations.
Things that I think would be great news:
1. If China's birthrate increased.
2. If China settled any of its foreign disputes.
3. If China leaped ahead of the West in a core technological area like engines, SME, biotech, or space exploration.
4. If China liberalized its domestic political environment.
5. If China's capital markets/stock market became as deep as the US.
6. If China's PC OS had wide adoption replacing MS Windows.
7. If China improved its social welfare system, free housing, reduced healthcare costs, lower childcare costs.
8. If China allowed migrant workers more rights in cities/urban areas.
Your quadrant 2 reasoning doesn't make any sense.
Good foreign relations with the USA requires China not to challenge the USA, and for the US to remain the global hegemon.
But a wealthy China will inevitably be so big that it will challenge the USA in every respect.
A wealthy China would have an economy 4x larger, due to 4x the population.
Therefore good relations with the USA requires China to stay poor.
That is not a good outcome for the Chinese people.
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On the other hand, you believe that if China becomes a technologically advanced nation (Quadrant 1+3) , then everything turns out fine for China.
I agree with this, because if China becomes hi-tech, it will almost certainly escape the middle income trap, and become a prosperous nation. When you combine this with the size of China's population, that translates into outsized economic/military/political/cultural influence.
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You need to change your evaluations in this framework.
The conclusion is that China needs to be technologically
advanced and therefore
prosperous.
And this inevitably means accepting worse relations with the USA.
How far relations decline is up for debate, but this situation will last for another at least another 10 years, until China opens up a commanding lead in terms of GDP/technology. For example, the Australian government white papers project the Chinese economy at 2x the USA in the 2030-2035 timeframe.
In terms of R&D, remember the National Science Foundation reported that in 2019, China likely spent more on R&D than the USA.
The statistics also show that Chinese R&D spending is still increasing sharply.
If you look to the 2030-2035 timeframe, we could expect China to have an economy twice the size of the USA plus a modest increase in R&D intensity to 3% (which is still lower than its close neighbours Japan and Korea).
When you run those numbers, China would be spending more on R&D than the rest of the developed world combined.
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