This seems like a reasonable description of China's objectives for their rising power:
Today, China is pursuing a concentric circles grand strategy, organized around four major ambitions. At the core is the eternal goal of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—preserving and strengthening the party’s power. A second goal is restoring national unity, by bringing wayward regions and provinces, such as Hong Kong and Taiwan, back into the fold. A third goal includes reestablishing a sphere of semi-exclusive interest in China’s geopolitical neighborhood, in which smaller countries defer to Beijing’s wishes and outside actors—namely, America—are powerless to interfere. Finally, China is seeking global influence as a means of weakening the US-led liberal order and, perhaps, constructing a Chinese-led order in its place.
The priority of CCP rule is significant. And it means that the risk of war isn't just from the last three ambitions as you might think.
What risks would "China" (that is, the CCP) take abroad to achieve their primary objective?
Still, while the article says that America's post-Cold War policy of trying to engineer a peaceful rise and transform China into a more open society has failed, all we can say is that it has failed so far.
Who knows how the rising Chinese people will react to a China under Xi that is cracking down hard at home to suppress even a whiff of dissent?
UPDATE: Related:
Two things are impeding Chinese efforts to achieve superpower status; economic stability and a network of powerful and reliable allies. The problems with economic stability are linked to the more serious problems with establishing stable relationships with other countries.
Chinese tradition prevents both of these because China traditionally recognizes only enemies and subordinate foreigners. China does not do allies in the traditional way. Current Chinese “allies” include Russia, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Turkey, Pakistan and Iran. These are not what most countries would consider reliable and useful allies. Turkey and Iran are not reliable or particularly dependable and useful. The other allies, including Russia, are more dependents than traditional allies.
That doesn't mean China can't gain faux allies at America's expense if we aren't careful about maintaining our power.
