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Actually, it’s the contrary. The current system relies extensively on dollar hegemony, where the US provides a huge consumer market to sustain China’s outsized productive capacity. And as you can see that the investment-led growth phase is winding down, it paradoxically drives China to become even more reliant on its export market since the domestic consumer market has failed to absorb its own production.

Therefore, we see record China’s trade surplus of $1 trillion for the last couple of years - the reason is simple: in order to keep up the same level of growth, but without investment and domestic consumption, the export sector has to make up for it in order to keep the workers employed and the industries running. As the US ramps up its sanctions, China has no choice but to dump its goods in other countries, in order to save its own economy.

Meanwhile, Chinese workers receive no real benefit in return, because these are surplus dollar is simply a number in the bank account, and is not used for importing goods and services that can improve lives of the Chinese workers. In fact, all of that $1 trillion surplus shipment of goods can sink in the sea during transport and nothing changes financially for China - so what’s the point of accumulating those dollars to begin with, which required real labor and resources that could have been allocated for other parts of the domestic economy?

Finally, there is nothing - no real constraints - that stops China from providing full employment for its people, raising wages, while performing its military buildup. What is constraining China’s economic policy is its adherence to Western neoclassical theories (which provide justification for neoliberalism). You cannot convince me that China’s economy today cannot provide what the USSR (a far weaker economy) could easily provide for its own people decades ago?

This is the fundamental difference between China’s reform era and the Soviet economy. The USSR focused on building a workers’ state where their rights are fully protected. The industrialization and the technological advancements came as a product of this new system. Of course, the USSR was not a paradise and they have corruption problems of their own, but one cannot deny that wealth inequality in the USSR was amongst the lowest in the world. In fact, pension and free public services in the USSR never stopped even during the Great Patriotic War from 1941-1945, as millions of people were killed and its economy greatly disrupted.

China’s post-reform era is very different, and followed much closer to the Japan and South Korea’s model. As Deng Xiaoping himself said, we have to let a small bunch of people to get rich first. Black cats, white cats, it doesn’t matter. Well, it’s been 50 years, I think we are overdue for addressing the massive wealth inequality issue - which, as I have pointed out, is exactly causing the low domestic consumption.

As for the US, who says the US consumption-based economy is what’s causing its deindustrialization and its poor military buildup? These are policy choices.

The US, of course, can do all of them. But the problem with re-industrialization is the re-proletarianization of the US working class, who will have the leverage to challenge the capitalist class at home. This, the bourgeoisie cannot allow. Besides, industrial capital threatens the profitability of Wall Street finance capital. This is a contradiction of US hyper-financialized capitalism, not a real constraint.

Similarly, the financialization (grifting) of US military industrial complex came after the collapse of the USSR, when during the 1990s there were no longer credible threats to the US military hegemony. To sustain the profitability of the MIC, grifting had to take place to allow the money to flow into the defense contractors. The Boeing/McDonnell Douglas merging in the 1990s was a prime example of this. This has more to do with Wall Street finance capitalism than a domestic consumption-led economy problem.

I believe it's because geopolitical concerns come first and foremost. What good is socialism if it is suffocated in the cradle by external forces?

If I'm being charitable and to China and the CPC I am, this would be in my mind a big concern. The moment the west is economically decoupled from you is the moment they can afford to do ANYTHING. From yes sanctions and blockades and conflicts to prevent you from selling to other markets like Europe, MENA, Africa, Latin/South America, Asian vassals, etc that strangle you and isolate you from the world like the USSR to truly violent and desperate acts like using nuclear weapons because there are no economic concerns. I think there may be those in the CPC who view the US with incredible concern as a deranged, violent maniac that only isn't attacking them viciously on multiple fronts because of their intertwined dependency. So the thinking goes you can't transition to socialism YET because doing that will scare off the capitalists, result in de-coupling, re-shoring (not necessarily to US but India for example) and result in a conflict. Better to bide your strength as long as you can and when the moment comes be as strong as you can be with people, industry, tech as advanced and built as you can reasonably make it so you hit the ground on the new cold war conflict running.

The problem with this type of thinking and planning of course is you risk having types who constantly make excuses for why now is not the right time even when it is, who resist change because they're risk averse or genuinely liberal thinking and enjoy all this private enterprise and capitalist market economy mode. So you have a risk of not striking at the ideal time and of rot setting in as well as of course the cost born by the Chinese people in situations of economic decline where rather than going the state planning route harder to alleviate that you believe they just have to endure it for the sake of "the plan". I am hopeful that China is just waiting until 2030 as their plans state and at that point having accumulated as much as they can in the interim and remaining as entangled with the west as they can economically they'll begin to change things around. But it's a real danger. It's playing with fire because it gives liberal-roaders, revisionists and opportunists opportunities to put a socialist sounding logical spin on their desires to keep things free market. And as others note deeper in this thread there's a real risk they can push for delays if economic stagnation occurs and they can say "we need more time to build up, just another 10 years, just let us clear this stagnation, we need to open up more" and that can lead to even worse things like the kind of decay and rot that claimed the USSR. They need very steady hands at the very top for the next 5 years at least.

There's a real risk of hesitancy because of how the US has set up dominoes to strangle the B&R for example so I hope 2030 is set in stone as far as possible because by then China's military will be reasonably modernized, enough to likely stand up to the US very effectively, a lot of tech will have caught up, independence on semi-conductors could be a reality, etc.