native Chinese here, naturalized US citizen since 18 year old. Having lived in the states for 30 years. Fluent in both English and Chinese.
China is a very broad topic, all I can say is don't be blinded by all the positive/cheering leading news of its economic miracle. It was able to achieve such economic success in such a short time is because its government was and willing to do some very deceitful/unethical things. Deng XiaoPing(the CCP chairman who decided the open-door policy in 1970's) said 不管白猫黑猫捉住老鼠就是好猫 (English: “It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white; as long as it catches mice), meaning economic success at all costs and regardless of means. The long term goal is to dethrone the US, the initial strategy is to hide its true intention, to play weak and appear harmless and friendly(a strategy prescribed in Art of the War by Sun Tzu)
This is the strategy from the 80's to the mid 2000's. During the honey moon period, it's received massive, massive amount of foreign investments from the Asian four tigers (HongKong, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea), Japan and the U.S. China also forces technology transfer to build up their so called indigenous industries. So once they've mastered the skill/technologies, the government give massive subsidies to local companies to provide business growth and thus drive out foreign competitions.
After some power struggle in the 2015, Xi JinPing became the new Chairman. He's since then wiped out a lot of his rivalries by using anti-graft campaign and changed the so-called constitution to give himself unlimited terms (it was set to 2 terms by Deng in the 80's). His government has also started to spread the idea to the rest of the world that the Chinese authoritarian economic/political model is better than the democratic one of the West and that China is on its way to restore to its former glorious Central-Kingdom status. (中国=China, meaning The Central Kingdom, can also be understood as center of the universe.) It sickens me when I saw Tim Cook worshiped him during Xi's visit to the States a few years ago and that Mark Zuckerberg went as far kissing ass as to asked Xi to name his new-born daughter which Xi refused.
Censorship has been getting much stronger in the past few years, basically all social media sites are blocked, plus youtube, all google products, etc , etc. Any online posts mentioning of 1989 June 4 (massacrer of students), Taiwan, Tibet, criticism of CCP are automatically removed by A.I.
Also, China (not bound by a treaty)has been developing Intermediate Range Nuclear Missiles , that's why Donal Trump wanted to pull out of the INF treaty with Russia.
I've only scratched the surface. Hope I've enlightened you.
[A] Resource you can look into
https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Year-...hael+pillsbury
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Mod edit: Links to videos removed)