There's a reason why Xi Jing Ping came begging for relief in APEC San Francisco. Which he got none.
He was trying to get American business to come back to China. Instead, not much deals happened. Furthermore, it was rumored that Goldman Sachs bought a seat at dinner with Xi, just to let him know that Goldman was selling huge amount of properties in China.
He was also protesting US giving arms to Taiwan. Nothing happened.
One country has the primary investment sector being real estate, where their top 2 companies are bankrupt. Another country has the primary investment sector being stock market, where their tech top company is worth 30 of the other country's top tech companies.
Easy to figure out which one was begging for money
I also wouldn't necessarily take current market values of companies to be their actual worth. A product from e.g. Apple and e.g. Xiaomi are 95% similar and more than likely sell roughly the same amount of e.g. phones. Apple's value is in its brand, not necessarily that the goods are vastly technologically superior, etc., nor its capabilities as a company to produce goods.
Xi thought China could win the political battle without losing the economic one. He assumed the alliance would split apart, and the US would be forced to back down. At that point China would be free to project it's power across most of Asia without interference from the West. Whether that's taking back Taiwan, or at least the entirety of the nine-dash line islands. The US or any other foreign vessel couldn't transit the South China sea without the OK from China.
He tried to pick off the members of the alliance one by one (the trade battle with Australia is a great example), but failed. Eventually the US and other nations said "enough is enough" and instituted sanctions on China. In addition private companies decided the political uncertainty was too high a risk. Combine that with the demographic bomb the country is facing, the debt-bomb from Chinese real estate and Xi realized he lost his gamble. The Chinese economy couldn't survive long enough under sanctions for China to win the political battle.
But to be honest, he burned too many bridges. The Chinese economy is struggling. The embargo on technology is going to hurt China way more than it hurts the West. He came to San Francisco in hopes of repairing enough of the relationship as to not entirely sink the Chinese economy.
To the topic of ‘Wolf Warriors’, the policy dropped as early as May 2021 so it's highly possible that the change itself is not economic related (https://thediplomat.com/2022/01/is-china-putting-wolf-warrio...). The targeted audience (of the foreign policy) may not be the West, but global south. There is a paper (I'm too lazy to find the link) claim that the ‘Wolf Warriors’ rhetoric used by China's diplomats in non-west country doesn't change much.
If you are intrested in the changes under Xi, Kevin Rudd has a series of deep analysis: https://viet-studies.net/kinhte/WorldAccordingtoXi_FA.pdf. Generally China's decision making process doesn't care too much about winning or competing or any particular goal especially in short term. They are based on long-term analisys of "what will happen inevitably" and back track from that conclusion. Many of these decisions make no sense from West's perspective under a cost-benefit analysis.
>"Xi’s ideological beliefs have committed China to the goal of building what Xi describes as a “fairer and more just” international system—one anchored in Chinese power rather than American power"
>"Xi has communicated to the party a crystal-clear message: China is much more powerful than it ever was, and he intends to use this power to change the course of history."
This being in the underlying goal (or as your put it - inevitability) of China being the predominant power in Asia.
>"But Xi is not completely secure. His Achilles’ heel is the economy"
And this comment reflecting the idea that he can only accomplish all this with a strong economy. And with the string of bad news coming out of China lately, one can't help but noticed Xi's much more conciliatory tone in the past few months compared with the image of a couple years back.
> one can't help but noticed Xi's much more conciliatory tone in the past few month
It maybe more relates to the fact that diplomas advocating for a more hawkish foreign policy being slowly wiped out from the power centre after mid 2021. Though a full swing policy change may only possible after the first plenary session of the 20th Central Committee (which was October 2022).
Xi never hides that he is just reading what was decided within the party for many of these foreign policies. SCMP has reported that during the Xi-Biden meeting for any issue not directly related to China, he will read the notes.
It doesn’t make sense from outside the party as I said so I think your feeling is probably why Kevin Rudd is lobbying in both U.S and Australia for better understanding the situation.
Also you can only go so far ideologically before stopped by the reality (or vice versa in realism because ideology is a larger part of our self-identity). A more ideological CCP only means they are more willing to afford the cost, push as far as they can, and retreat a little bit after over doing it. IMO cost-benefit analysis (or usually, who is the winner / the winning scenario) isn’t very helpful in such context because that’s not CCP’s calculation.