>>13863282China's strategy is pretty simple and straightforward. A lot of people refer to Sun Tsu's Art of War but fail to grasp that Sun Tsu is the embodiment of typical Chinese strategic thought rather than a militarily analysis by an individual.
Firstly China's strategy is very long term. Not surprising when its each generation that follows the same thought patterns. They dont care so much about risking the chance to win NOW rather than being absolutely certain of winning eventually. Therefore they engage in a very long game of achieving incremental changes to their advantage.
Now what
>>13863342 said is completely correct. The rest of the world is incapable of achieving effective strategies. For the Chinese, being a highly pragmatic people, the test for them is to see how effective such a strategy can be. If not, too bad, if so, then they have added another powerful tool to their arsenal. Its also about maxing out all the possible bonuses. Such as increasing centralized control and surveillance, pushing the limits of authoritarianism, responding to dissent, testing the rebelliousness of the people and the loyalty of their officials. All the while carefully monitoring western responses and consequences. Its a big game with very serious pay offs. They have for example that western nations will willingly take on significant economic harm, polarize their societies and become increasingly authoritarian themselves when faced with a pandemic that actually causes very little loss of life when measured against actual population numbers.
Never lose sight of the fact that China is concerned with two major strategic objectives.
1) World domination politically and economically
2) Dominance of the Han majority and ethnic homogeneity
These are backed by the advancement of science and the neutralization of threats to China.
They will keep slowly pushing towards those goals, inch by inch, century after century. As far as China is concerned, Covid is just another inch.
