> decisions that make little sense

You keep alleging this but much of his decisions made perfect sense and help contribute to building national power. Something Bo wouldn't do, and things Hu failed to do. So in that sense Xi is at least more competent than Hu while also keep in mind Xi's policies in many ways proceeded his tenure. The different between other populist is Xi's China is unequestionablly stronger in relative power by almost every metric. Xi's successful.

> pale in comparison ... no progress was gained

There was progress. Destroying the old and uniting society under common national identity was paramount to enabling subsequent reforms. Destruction WAS the progress. It was the point. Sometimes destruction was excess, but MORE destruction was better than less. India unable to destroy and renew itself = India STILL has hunger problems on level of North Korea today. The result is additional generations of Indians suffering subsistent poverty hundreds of millions of excess and prevental death. Cost of GLP and CR pale in comparison.

> /s

Lazy. Plenty of literature out there affirming PRC industry and purchase power = massive buildup cheap.

> you would need transparency

I mean no? You don't? You've drank the democracy dogma koolaid. CCDI eliminated 2M+, Xi doesn't have that many rivals. Of course he's going to use it to consolidate power, because eliminating that much corruption require firm power.

> Literally the only thing China would need to do is wait...

Waiting is how PRC got embarassed in 3rd strait crisis and Belgrade embassy bombing with inpunity. Again, learn some history, US pivoted to Asia before Xi. Manifested in Trump pushing unconstrained anti-PRC populism. Xi couldn't wait because US was already plotting against PRC pre Xi. He had to answer, like every PRC leader during their Sino US crsis. Except Xi chose respond to US as equal. And it worked. The reason why western MSM is losing their shit is Xi's PRC can't be talked to from "position of strength" anymore.

> galvanize rival nations to better cooperate with each other. Genius move just like his mishandling of HK.

Except... none of this is true outside of western MSM headlines. Wolf warrior demonstrated that PRC barking = no countries except US will affect PRC domestic concerns except with theatre. Every one of these "cooperative" alliance has stalled or failed to affirm intent to contain PRC. Essentially everyone expressed neutraility or explicitly won't commit to military against PRC interests, including TW. Xi's asserting revealed how weak bloc against PRC actually is.

> support the Lost gen

Lost gen had enough political capita to block NSL and patriotic education and were gaining support. Now they're gone. It's not Xi being genius but doing what eventually had to be done. NSL free HK is too much liability in age of great power competition, not worth "waiting" for.

> meaningful opposition would all but disappear

That's not how it works. I suspect you know how many countries have poor opinion of PRC but strong economic linkages. Did economic integration swayed PRC closer to US orbit? TW generations that grew up under democracy like HK generations that grew up under liberal educationisn't going to clamor for reunication with PRC under CCP... which it will be for foreseeable future. It doesn't take a genius to read the room and know where things are going and how to respond. Xi isn't some genius sweeping the west with grand strategy, but he's doing a demonstrably great job doing generally the right things and the hard things for PRC interests.