So I’m vaguely aware of Peter - he strikes me as the sort of geopolitics dude that used to roam Clubhouse. HIs incentives are to make as much noise as possible - so similar to people who predict Bitcoin will be one million or two million at this date, that means predicting geopolitical events exactly. There’s very little downside to being wrong, since he’s counting on the Internet to forget essentially (which is why this model requires constantly bursting forward with dramatic new predictions).

I do think that if there were a collapse, China has a history of gradually then suddenly. For example, the 1911 Xinhai Revolution where in a few months, dynastic rule that lasted millennia was overthrown. There are certainly things I can think of that might lead to a collapse - demography, youth unemployment, need to fight over Taiwan in some form. But I also usually point to Iran as a weaker regime (with similar human rights repression) that has still delivered stability and some material prosperity - yet still chugs along.

All this to say - I can see a case being made for collapse. But it would surprise me a lot. Then again, maybe that’s a generational thing - older people would have lived through the Soviet Union falling apart. For us youngins’, terrible regime leaders staying on seems to be more of a norm. Even Syria was a relative shock to me.