This sounds like how some regions are “due” for another catastrophic earthquake. Unfortunately, the modern notion of when a place is “due” for a revolution doesn’t take account of the sophisticated totalitarian surveillance technology that China has been building for the past 15 years.

You may not intend to give this impression, but the sense I get from casual observers of China (I count myself in this group) is that if we just let China do its China thing eventually it will implode and some different state will emerge, probably slightly better. As an American, this seems like The Way of Things because we are taught that freedom triumphs, even if it takes a long time, even if it comes in fits and starts.

It seems that this historical bias has created a blind spot for the possibility that things will continue to get very much worse for the Chinese people — who will go their own way entirely, as a group influenced by a completely different cultural background, with entirely different notions of what good government is.