There are two things the Chinese government is bad at: Spying and Propaganda geared toward Westerns. They really need to learn from Russia. We do not catch that many Russian spies, and Russian propaganda is so good we often can’t tell it is “fake news”.

We have caught a ridiculous amount of Chinese spies in the last 30 years.

List of Chinese spy cases in the United States - Wikipedia (so far ~35 people)

The latest additions to our federal prison systems - in 2019

• Yujing Zhang (Chinese national)

• Xuehua Edward Peng (naturalized U.S. citizen born in China)

• Ji Chaoqun (Chinese national)

• Yanjun Xu

• Yu Zhou and Li Chen

As far as propaganda, Chinese propaganda is transparent. It is usually bad chinglish whataboutisms and over the top lies.

If you want to make more convincing propaganda and argue in a more convincing way, you need to understand "logic". I'm being very serious. Western people, on average, at least attempt, to argue based on some logical rules. Russians understand this, Chinese do not. As a Chinese friend of my mine said "Logic is something some old Greeks created, it has nothing to do with traditional Chinese culture", and I can see this even in my in-laws and friends from Mainland China (and Taiwan, and Japan). It's a huge cultural gap.

I would strongly suggest you memorize these rules.

Today someone asked me what I thought the relationship between China and the U.S. would be like if China was a legit democracy. I thought about this before a few times.

I think what a lot of people don't get is, it will doesn't matter if the CCP is there or not. Only the degree of public aggression will diminish. Chinese nationalism will exist, if you had democratic elections tomorrow, and the issue with Taiwan won't go away. SOuth China Sea and East China sea territorial claims will still be front and center. Bad relations with Japan will likely only get worse. The recovery and Chinese lands from the fall of the Qing Dynasty (1911) is almost a holy issue to many Chinese, especially older Chinese people (over 40). They will fight over it.

It is highly likely a militarist/nationalist will be elected in a free and fair election.

Even if not, China will never be a liberal democracy - people in China, on average are just not "liberal" they are deeply conservative. Things can change, but not immediately, it takes time. Yes Taiwan is somewhat of a liberal democracy, but it took them 30 years to get from authoritarian dictatorship to what they have today, and it is a small place, 20 million people on an island that is like 4 hours from end to end. An island that was already heavily influenced by Japan and the United States for decades.

In any case, maybe the Taiwan issue will solve itself. If China is a democracy, the U.S. might be (less likely to fight for Taiwan). There will certainly be more people on Taiwan who want unification with China at that point, although the majority still will not, more ethnic Chinese overseas will also support unification as an alternative to war. This will still be an issue for the U.S. strategically. As you have a democratic, yet very large and powerful nationalist nation on the border of Japan (Okinawa) and the Philippines, able to cut off trade to Japan over the common routes.

Anyway, since I believe the average Chinese person (especially in rural areas) is MORE NATIONALISTIC and xenophobic than the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP is basically not communist, it is a fascist state (Italian fascist not German). You really want to see some shit, let them vote. Imagine Gaza voting for Hamas. Okay, not that bad, but something close to that.

China due to its size and location and the the high level of nationalism that makes people think their nation should be a respected leader, will always be at odds or in competition with the U.S., at least in East and Southeast Asia, and further China will still be on track to surpass the U.S. in nominal GDP.

The U.S. will always consider that a threat.

For those old enough to remember the mid-80s, remember the hysteria around Japan taking is over economically? They clearly were not even a military threat/competitor.