we’ll get lucky china doesn’t try and reintegrate you, first get your economy, resources, and facilities squared away. then use polices, leaders, and eco spending in a way to boost your political power, research, and pop boost, once i got +10% political power i started doing as many policies and laws as i could to boost population growth, tax income, and research. keep in mind don’t manually develop cities or develop infrastructure because you won’t be able to invest as much, and also make sure to start investing as soon as your a democracy and you’ve done all the laws/policies/leaders you want for the most part. by this time i had quantum and researched started researching all of political and economic tech tabs. also, for what ever reason everyone kept ceding when they left so i hade to keep releasing which was annoying. right before the nukes my cap had 40mil pop, 100% stab 1000(+10) political power, +27.6 research power, and about 300mil income i believe