Europeans have killed how many American Indians and ended up just fine. But can they do that today? Coerced sterilization of Indigenous women in Canada had been legal for as late as 1970s and do they dare to do that today [1,2]?
What I'm saying is the world has changed quite a bit and so do CCP.
>and on every previous occasion they ended up just fine.
Really? For starters during previous conflicts CCP rarely had an economy to crash.
Again, the legitimacy of CCP within mainland is almost purely lay on its power of economy growth. There are many Chinese people who are not content with it but bear CCP because of the economy growth [3].
You probably knew the 2014 Hong Kong protest, which had a similar scale? If CCP can wait that one out, why can't it do it again this time? [4]
1. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/forced-sterilization-la...
2. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sterilizat...
3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20148705
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Central_with_Love_and_P...