I'm not sure where you're getting your 100-year crystal ball. Instead of hating on them (which coincidentally is exactly what Putin wants us to do,) why don't w

I'm not sure where you're getting your 100-year crystal ball. Instead of hating on them (which coincidentally is exactly what Putin wants us to do,) why don't we try to break the problem down? The biggest difference between the Chinese system and ours is not the selection of leaders, which is a lot more "democratic" there than in many of our allies like Saudi Arabia. It's tolerance for dissent. The trick is that the CCP (which at this point is about as communist as Quaker Oats is Quaker) don't have to shed their power base to do it. They just have to have more than one, without horribly repressing the others. In practice, countries can end up having a dominant party while being actually democratic, like Mexico and South Africa did for a long time (or Oklahoma and California for that matter.) Often, the dominant party meddles with the media and stacks the deck in their favor. The rest of the world grumbles but keeps playing along. I think ruling elites find it hard to even entertain the notion of dismantling a conformist monoculture. It is a mixed bag from their perspective, and they're technically not wrong: they'll have to deal with e.g. populist morons, foreign-backed candidates, and political disruption. But it's for the best for their country and the planet. A coup or rebellion isn't needed. It's much more likely to play out as a set of reforms pushed by "visionary leaders," like Perestroika in the mid-80s. This is what we should be pushing for, in front of and behind the scenes.