[hybrids]

I am no apologist for China, but the course of the American Dream itself was similarly colored by a "rose-tinted" view juxtaposed with less-than-ideal circumstances. One could look at for instance its original emergence in the 19th century after being primarily brought on by the 1848 revolutions in Europe, legalized chattel slavery still existed and manifest destiny would turn out spill a lot of blood in its wake, both that of natives, settlers, and soldiers. This, of course, ignores the emancipatory possibility of the American Dream then - for instance, the massive emigration to America and throughout its frontier that occurred in the 19th century provided much of the pretext for the actual dismantling of chattel slavery.

The more modern, post-WWII imago of the American Dream of a booming economy and cute little suburbs was overlaid over antiquated Jim Crow laws and early Cold War saber-rattling that would accelerate into the greater turmoil of the '60s, which would turn out a tragedy more than anything. Many of the criticisms you put on China now have mirrors in a historical America.

China and America are really both flip sides of the same coin. It is true that looking at China as a safe haven when America's economy and culture has become so anxiety-riden is silly and ignorant. China is able to rationalize itself with a liquefied idea "socialism" it never truly was able to understand in the first place, and has grown to content to treat the task of governing its people in similar kind to herding animals.

I would not pin China's blame singularly on the CCP or Xi for that matter, but I would rather describe the CCP a symptom of modern capitalism. If one were to hypothetically "clean the CCP's house" with a new stock of younger legislators that weren't "beneficiaries of the Mao era" as you claim, than you would likely find them repeating the same regressions as their predecessors; never mind that Xi himself was a victim of the Cultural Revolution, considering that his sister was killed by student protesters and his father was jailed for 10 years. China's problems (more problems of contemporary society in general) extend beyond the Mao legacy, similar to how Leon Trotsky did not regard Stalinism in the Soviet Union as purely beginning and ending with the one man.