> Xi had the qualities to at least direct PRC in right direction vs Bo.

I agree that Bo wouldn't have been much better than Xi, but that doesn't mean that Xi is a good statesman. His incorruptibility is marred by poor decisions that make little sense unless you're the Chinese version of Trump (Maduro & Chavez are probably better comparisons).

> PRC can trade lives for progress. It's harnessing the capital part of human capital. Bluntly frontloading a few million deaths to quickly set up the right conditions for future growth is the correct decision. Of course there were missteps, but overall Mao did the right things considering external factors. Again, look to India for a comparable alternative.

Just because India has its own mess, it doesn't condone what Mao did. India's problems also pale in comparison to the man made disasters of the Great Leap "Forward" and the Cultural Revolution. A lot of lives were lost, but no progress was gained unless you consider it as a step in controlling the overall world population. Instead, it just caused chaos and national humiliation. If anything, it was 1000 steps backwards.

> Recentralizing is not bad either - it's industrial policy - which is what made the west strong in the first place

It is not what made the West strong. Capitalism is about decentralizing control, and letting the more efficient markets decide where to allocate resources. It's imperfect and there's still waste, but overall it's far more efficient than centralized economic planning. Centralized economic planning is what caused the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution. All it takes is a few bad ideas and absolute control. There's plenty of historical data to bolster my position.

> Xi modernized the PRC military on a modest 2% budget. It's what NATO ought to spend. The amount of procurement PRC has made under Xi doesn't suggest there's massive waste

Yes, I totally believe that coming from an authoritarian government with little to no transparency. /s

> one of Xi's first efforts was cleaning out notoriously corrupt PLA brass, which Bo was associated with.

The corruption elimination campaigns are just thinly veiled efforts to eliminate political rivals. If officials really wanted to eliminate corruption, you would need transparency. Transparency only comes with freedom of speech and a democratic government.

> Matching US deterrence post pivot to Asia was incredibly difficult undertaking.

While US is still powerful at the moment, only the Western equivalents of you and FooBarWidget would fail to admit that it's been on a steady decline for years now. Not to mention that it's extremely overstretched by being World Police, and politically polarized as a divided nation. The TPP failed. Literally the only thing China would need to do is wait. Nothing immediate needed to be done. The only thing Xi has accomplished is to galvanize rival nations to better cooperate with each other. Genius move just like his mishandling of HK.

> No it wasn't. HK existed for 23 years of NSL exception and being exploited by the west as the spy capital of Asia to undermine PRC interest - it was never a sustainable arrangement.

Is this a joke? The Lost generation was just a vocal minority. Key emphasis on minority. The new generation can barely even speak Cantonese anymore. Again all you had to do was wait for the inevitable to happen. Yet due to Xi's 'genius', he's shifted formerly indifferent public opinion to support the Lost gen.

> No one had any pretensions that TW would return to PRC on a 10/20 year timeline.

Like HK and given the controls and policies set by Xi's predecessors, it was only a matter of time when Taiwan was so economically linked to the mainland, that meaningful opposition would all but disappear. Instead, Xi with his usual genius moves just helped the separatists make their point with his other genius decisions involving HK.