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Notes -
Maybe in some respects, but in other respects China seems more dangerous than the USSR.
China is actually rather tame as super powers go. It has minor expansionist aspirations, especially in its backyard the South China Sea. Of course, there's Taiwan, but even that country thinks that it and the mainland are a single nation, they just disagree on who's the legitimate one. That would be akin to a counterfactual world where both Russia and Ukraine consider themselves to be the true inheritors of the USSR.
It is also particularly concerned with protecting its own very exposed supply chain and being self-sufficient in the eventuality of war shutting down maritime traffic.
China is defensive. They have no interest in spreading international communism or Xi Jinping Thought. Not even the communism as a fig-leaf over state capitalism that they actually endorse. They are agnostic to the internal politics and ideologies of foreign countries as long as they don't interfere with theirs. Third parties have to do very little to remain in their good books, free trade is usually sufficient.
I would expect that if by some miracle, Taiwan suddenly reunified with China, they had uncontested hegemony over a few islands, and the US went from a cold-war footing to neutrality, then the rest of the world would have little to fear from China. It might bicker with India over mountains and a few valleys, but that is a glorified border skirmish that would simmer indefinitely as nobody really wants to escalate first.
Of course, this is an implausible setting, and it is possible that such a China would then get expansionist tendencies, but that's not really what's been observed so far.
And most of China's woes are self-inflicted. If they didn't threaten Taiwan or throw its weight around with its neighbors, then the happy end of history that was the late 90s to the early 2000s probably would have persisted for much longer.
I'm not disagreeing with you, in fact I agree. I just want to explain why from China's perspective, it is a far more restrained and civil superpower than the USSR ever was. And they even have a point.
Why can't we all get along?
A cautious monster is not necessarily preferable to a reckless one.
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