[Quixote]

^ China is a much more integral part of the global economy, and its citizens have gotten too much of a taste of "what could be" for the CCP to tighten their grip on society so much and so suddenly.

When you start confining people to their homes, not giving people access to money they have put in savings, suggesting that educated youth should go to the countryside and work the fields, telling people to "eat bitterness" when they were promised prosperity, or (heaven forbid) crack down on people speaking in their native Chinese dialects that are deemed "foreign languages," that's going to backfire eventually. These dynamics aren't playing out in isolation.

Like I said, restricted personal freedoms in exchange for wealth and prosperity. Money talks just as much in China. China's economic collapse has coincided with even more oppressive tactics. A whole bunch of young men can't get laid because there aren't enough women to "go around," and the women (who are not valued as much as men to begin with) have the luxury of being very selective with whom they date, much less marry and procreate with (if they even want to have just one child).