Naysayers have been predicting the demise of everything for the whole of human history. They've been almost entirely wrong, because even when they happen to be correct about the date they're almost always wrong about the specific details.

Nevertheless, most institutions that have existed through human history no longer exist.

Naysayers being wrong isn't a data point. It's barely even noise.

There's no realistic world where China rises smoothly with no setbacks along the way. It's all but mathematically impossible by the nature of complex systems. It is reasonable to be concerned that their rise up to this point has also been unrealistically smooth. Communism has a track record of producing this apparent growth curve, after all.