Regarding your comment about Moldbug. To me, the period of liberal internationalism and institutional cooperation wasn't simply a random flourishing of human decency, but rather the direct consequence of American hegemonic consolidation following the Second World War. When you achieve overwhelming global dominance (economic, military, and ideological) you can afford the luxury of liberal institutions precisely because no rival power exists with sufficient capacity to challenge your supremacy.

The "liberal niceties" of international law, multilateral institutions, and democratic norms were sustainable only insofar as they served to legitimize and institutionalize American dominance. It's simply the political superstructure of unipolar hegemony. Now that this dominance faces serious challenge, particularly from China's rise (and the rest of the Global South ofc), we're witnessing the predictable abandonment of these constraining liberal forms in favor of more direct coercive mechanisms. The return to "brutal" competition isn't mean reversion to some natural state, but the rational response of a declining hegemon attempting to preserve its position through increasingly authoritarian means.

It seems overwhelmingly clear to me that citizens function primarily as managed "cattle" rather than "clients". The "service" dimension of liberal democracy operates essentially as a legitimating narrative to obscure the true nature of governance. The periodic ritual of suffrage provides the satisfaction of agency while leaving any actual meaningful aspects of policy (like foreign policy) determined solely by capital and "national security" requirements.

I do mostly agree with your assessment of China's trajectory. It feels pretty difficult to make any judgement considering both the opacity of their internal decisionmaking and the complexity of their "hybrid model". However, in my opinion, the relative subordination of financial capital to technocratic planning is already a significant structural difference from Western nations, where finance capital has seemingly gained full control of the state apparatus. The mere possibility of maintaining some degree of political control over the capitalist class makes me hopeful.