Xi's personal leadership lies on a promise of taking Taiwan in the forseeable future as part of the "restoration" of Chinese power. Anyone who disagrees honestly has no idea about Chinese political circles.
FYI, china has gotten much better at brainwashing over the past 10 years with the new age propaganda machine and increased censorship. Don't act like all this information is public.
I mean I'm Chinese, and the number of Americans with rose tinted glasses on China because "america bad" is insane. The real thing China does far better than the US, is having an understanding of how the US works and how to target Americans and American corporations with the right incentives. Americans on average almost know nothing about what the real China is like, and have a general disinterest in other countries and global affairs, and overlook the much suffering and abuse there is on a societal scale. I don't disagree with OP that the US needs to double down on improving social standards as a whole, but policymakers need to think hard about potential abuse from the Chinese side, especially when the economy is just a wheel driven by the political cart. The incentives don't align that neatly in the US, and coordination is hard.
Isn't stochastic parrot just a modern reframing of Searle's Chinese room, or am I oversimplifying here?