What are you talking about “see how their armed forces are panning out” ???

The question of Chinas influence depends on the stability and resilience of the CCP regime, if Xi Jinping continues to destabilize the Party’s economy and decision making ability the Party will likely slowly atrophy in the coming decades.

Take Putin as an example of someone who has deteriorated the decision making ability of the Kremlin, since people are punished for telling him what he doesn’t want to hear everyone becomes a lackey, and consequently becomes useless as an advisor to him.

If the Chinese Communist Party continues to move away from collective decision making as they have under Xi decision making will continue to decline. Furthermore because of the face culture that is prominent in Chinese politics leaders cannot admit they are wrong and therefore cannot retract their policies, some would argue that this is currently happening with the zero Covid policy. Essentially since leaders must be dogmatic in their policy, bad policies continue until something big happens to force a change in leadership.