I wish we could just de-escalate the situation with China. Dial back some of the economic squabbling as well as the military posturing. The West and China nee

I wish we could just de-escalate the situation with China. Dial back some of the economic squabbling as well as the military posturing. The West and China need each other economically, and both Biden and Xi are smart enough-- and old enough to remember nuclear terror-- to not want WWIII. I feel like most of the escalation is coming from the West though. They're the ones tossing around sanctions and national-security noise on speculation-- China might invade Taiwan. Are they willing to upset the order that's maintained stability for decades, and likely derail their economic miracle, over a symbolic chunk of rock? We can't ignore the "economic miracle" angle when comparing with, say, Russia/Ukraine-- Russia can justify an invasion by tossing around a "we've been abused and mocked since 1991, what do we have to lose" narrative, while China's star has been continually rising, so there's no need to recover lost prestige. Ironically, more sanctions and reduced detente could actually encourage an invasion, by reducing the economic ties and stoking fresh hostility, getting closer to the "what do we have to lose" moment. I feel like the problem is much more on a philosophical level. We're still remixing the Cold War. The current Western/Private Enterprise ecosystem needs to be able to say "THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE. NOTHING ELSE WILL EVER WORK. IT'S HUMAN NATURE." If we start successfully exploring alternatives, there's a risk of dislodging entrenched wealth. So if a state-capitalist or outright socialist state becomes competitive, the West instinctively responds with full (metaphoric) guns blazing to hobble it. The last thing the current ruling classes want is for people to start saying "Things are actually better off in China" and start asking "so how are they achieving that? Did it involve putting Jack Ma on a tighter leash than we give Elon Musk?" I personally want to see China succeed. Domestically, they're too big to fail. It's not like we have a way to peacefully and seamlessly transition a country of 1.4 billion people to some shiny new alternative. (Airdropping a fait-accompli democracy is a proven-terrible strategy). On an international-affairs level, we need a more multi-polar world-- we've seen (Iraq, Afghanistan) what happens when we have a single superpower with no real checks to its impunity. On a philosophical level, we shouldn't be packing all the eggs in the Western-Style Free Market/Democracy basket, because we're approaching, if not in a major transition point. We know these systems work somewhat in an age of bounty (cheap fossil fuels, absorbing and consuming an entire new hemisphere in 500 years, slashing of communications costs and latency) but will they still function smoothly in a coming age of scarcity (resource exhaustion, climate change)?