China’s strategy is no different than Lenin’s strategy when he launched the NEP. He aimed to buy the rope from the west which he would “hang” us with. With Western support, believing that Russia was liberalizing, Russia was industrialized. This is China’s purpose as well, but not just to modernize, but to wage economic war on us as well when the time comes.
China wants to be a rich, prosperous and powerful country. This contradicts the Maoist tents of an equal, poor and blank country.
But Maoism is nonsense and his heirs understand that China could not be all things to all people. As an emerging middle class country, its still governed by authoritarian politics.
But the improvement in the every day lives of the people has been tremendous. They call the new system, “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”