And it wasn’t just the CIA roundup, it was in multiple political/economic/military domains around 2012 that China started making clear their decision to suddenl

And it wasn’t just the CIA roundup, it was in multiple political/economic/military domains around 2012 that China started making clear their decision to suddenly reverse what had been decades of putting in a ton of effort and money into embracing the west. This caught many by surprise because the behavior seems bizarre from a western point of view. Instead China became increasingly aggressive to it’s neighbors and started using the west as adversaries to try to fan the flames of its version of nationalism, in order to distract from their many home issues. There was a reluctantly growing recognition of this, but Trump finally forced the public recognition of the issue in his characteristic camera grabbing way. Whether his efforts and characterization of the issue where ultimately helpful or harmful… is quite debated. Likewise our current attempts at a response continues to be occasionally questionable. If you are curious beyond more than this extremely barebones summary, there are a mile of books and days of videos on the topic, though I don’t have any personal recommendations offhand since that isn’t really my wheelhouse, just something I watched build up over the years and start effecting my industry (agriculture). It’s similar to how Europe had increasingly considered Russia to be moving into their big umbrella despite the occasional murder here and there. Hence the oil pipelines and deals. It took until the second time that Putin made his move on Ukraine before the illusion that Russia was ever a geopolitical friend was finally shattered.