China's Unpredictable Moves

I'm about as far from a China expert as you will find, but I would say that I think it's a very hard game for them to play this. The advantage that China has, of course, is it does not have electoral cycles, which is an advantage. But what it doesn't have is the extent of intellectual property base that the US has - despite many years of playing catch up, it's not there yet. It could be the old-fashioned one of, well, if you wait a couple of centuries, then most empires destroy themselves.