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There's an unsustainable component to every empire, in that the premise is always growth-centric and stratified; empires do not "prosper together". Growth turns to killing when the psyche of the nation needs a boost, cleaving a harder line into the social constructs of stratification by informing everyone of who is clean and goodly, and who is guilty by default and deserves their punishments. It reallocates praise and blame such that the established in-groups get the most credit by their own reckoning. On this I see Heather Marsh's views as some of the most clear-eyed.

The thing about authoritarian impulses throughout history is that they flare up and, for time, keep a country firmly gripped. Then they relax, and are somewhat forgotten about, even reconciled, until something comes along to trigger it again, in a replica of the abuse cycle. And China is not going to be different in this respect - moments where things get more oppressed for a time, and then moments of relief. The Xi regime has been relatively more oppressive in most recountings by Western sources. This is believable yet also not meaningful, since clearly the apparatus was there before.

IMHO, just because China has gotten this far with its current model says little about tomorrow. There is propaganda coming from all directions these days, so I'm always a little hesitant about "real truth" coming from random sources, but simultaneously suspicious of the official ones too. It's that climate, in itself, that damages the credibility of all regimes; it leaves truth and credit up for grabs to those who can forge a new path that makes the world cohere better. It's hard to defeat the real truth in the long run.