Many people like him in China. My prediction in the end China will lose
Here is an analogy: In a private equity deal, an investor lends money to an enterpreneur on the condition that the enterpreneur delivers excellent returns. If the enterpreneur succeeds, the loan is paid off and the enterpreneur continues forward. If the enterpreneur doesn't deliver the returns, the investor takes over the company, pushing out the enterpreneur.
During the China-US reapproachment in the late 1970s, US agreed to support China against the Soviet threat (with technology and economic advances) on the condition that China would allow US to install fifth column traitor puppets in the Chinese government apparatus.
The senior Chinese leadership gambled that China would be able to absorb the technology and develop itself economically fast enough that it would be able to eventually root out the fifth column before everything collapses.
The Americans bet that China would fail to absorb the technology and develop itself economically fast enough to avoid collapse by rooting out the fifth column.
So this dance between the two countries continued. A geopolitical poker game where the Chinese opened up to traitor fifth column and flirted with collapse deliberately, betting that this would keep the Americans pushing more chips on to the table but China will still prevail in the end.
The rise of Xi Jinping and his corruption crackdown (including traitors and fifth columnists) was China showing its final card -- a royal flush -- to clean out the American chips on the table. Alternatively, it is the enterpreneur delivering the returns to the investor and saying "my loan is repaid".
That was what infuriated the Americans. It has nothing to do with trade deficits or even technology. Those are just the surface manifestations not the underlying contradiction.
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