All that verbiage and what was the point exactly. Was this a polite and subtle way of calling modern China a Potemkin village, or is it simply what it appears

All that verbiage and what was the point exactly. Was this a polite and subtle way of calling modern China a Potemkin village, or is it simply what it appears to be: a specimen of pseudo-intellectualism. (There are other possibilities, but the date is not 1919, it is 2019, so a bit too late to the party, Bruno?)