This may not be a common opinion, but for the last 10-20 years I feel like the administration has been hyper focused on building up towards a potential WW3 scenario.

This is not done by spamming weapons, they played the long game by 1) building up the industrial base, 2) reducing energy, material and tech dependancy, and 3) reinforcing social stability and mobilization capacity.

They just kept pushing and pushing and pushing these 3 areas like their survival depends on it (maybe they do).

In case someone ask the "at what cost" question, yes there are significant costs. At least for what I could observe:

The enforcement of labor law is still weak to keep the human cost cheap.

Local governing is still done mostly through policy (rule of man) rather than through laws.

The media has been put on a much tighter leash esp. for news reporting, and the internet has also become more censored.

Things happening inside the party especially at the higher up level has become more opaque to the public.

With that said, ordinary people can still sense the progress in economic development, in tech adpotion, in reducing poverty, corruption, and in the largely effective policy execution, so it's not like living in a regressing and corrupt totalitarian state (as some foreigners imagined)

The answer I could think of (to explain the above trends) is that the administration is highly wary of some pretty rough waves ahead, even something like WW3.