I think people tend to gloss over the fact that China has a population of more than 1.4 billion people in a land area that's slightly smaller than the US, multiple territories in outright revolt, ongoing territorial conflict, some cities that are approaching inhospitability due to environmental damage, and our increasingly aggressive nation is something less than friendly with them.

I think one thing causing the apparent increase in political discontent in the US is the increasing metaphorical distance between congress and the people. Now imagine if you increased our population by more than 400%, had Hawaii declaring independence, and various states trying to separate either to go completely independent or join Mexico or Canada. And now of imagine that a coalition of China, Russia, Iran and other unfriendly nations were constantly posturing towards an invasion of Mexico which would put them right at our doorstep while their motherland remains far out of reach.

I'm in no way defending China, but I think it's safe to say that the level of authoritarianism we would respond with if we hit even a fraction of the issues they're facing would be unlike anything the world has ever seen. Our current political systems and technologies, regardless of specific political ideology, do not scale well.

That said there is one macabre issue that benefits China. About 50 years ago Chinese were starving to death by the tens of millions. While perhaps controversial, I think contentedness paradoxically breeds discontent. Consider in the US that much of the political discontent is heavily centered at some of the most privileged areas in the nation. We can wax poetic about justice and the nuance of social interaction. People struggling to just get by have more immediate issues to deal with. China's successful industrialization of their nation is already producing an increasingly large contented class to whom the struggles China has had are as personally familiar to them as the lynchings or Cold War of US history are to us. That newfounded contented class is likely to spark discontent towards the very actions that provided their luxury - and China will have to manage that somehow.