[jpgvm]

I agree with almost all of your post. However I would caution against underestimating Xi.

One doesn't bubble up to the head of the CCP without being an incredibly savvy political operator. It's non-nonsensical to imply that is possible without intelligence. Even if he may be uneducated, education and intelligence are separate axis even if we normally conflate them.

Also evidence suggests he is a good strategist, even if a bit brutish in his execution.

[Throwawayaerlei]

The problem with Xi is that his demonstrated domain experience is in becoming powerful in the CCP, not in anything else I'm aware of; no reason strategy there will translate into good results for the country including its power; see Mao. The observation that he's "not a very good helmsman" comes from all the things he's not handled well since clawing his way to the top, many before COVID started roaming the land.

In sort of the same domain, see how poor the response was to "pig Ebloa" (African swine fever) which was certain to hit the PRC once it broke out in the Caucuses and was not contained there. See the 2021-22 winter thermal fuel situation which started with pique which ended Australian coal imports (which are also cheaper than the PRC's own production on the mainland).

Other stuff he inherited, like the one child policy and I'm pretty sure the residential real estate bubble, so judging the quality of his response to them in the context of all their inertia is hard. That said, puncturing economic bubbles is not thing that should be delayed, although here again it would have needed to be replaced by _something_ or the PRC would have to end its financial repression (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_repression), something you also see most of the rest of the world continuing.