The whole point of bringing countries like China into the world economic system is to make sure that they realize that aggressive action is counterproductive and they refrain from doing so.
Unfortunately that hasn't really worked with China, which is why the world is starting to decouple from China; the CPP still prioritizes its institutional needs over "The People", which is ironic since they're supposed to be working for "The People."
That's probably why the CPP is scared of the people and tries to control them.
The world is really decoupling with China because it is so unpredictable. Xi made himself forever leader only 10 years ago and it's been a unpredictable rollercoaster of policy since then.
Stability is the foundation of every working relationship. Everyone wants to latch onto you when you are stable. You can even work with an adversary as long as they are stable. China had it for a while before Xi.
Most countries have yet to achieve long-term stability. Stability is super difficult to achieve.
Authoritative leaders inherently cannot be predictable because one person has a lot of power and can easily make sweeping changes.
Even though any organization led by a large committee is absolutely terrible at making long-term, coherent decisions, it also means that everything moves at a snail's place and any outsider can react faster than the committee can, and decisions also never stray too far from a certain point because there are too many cooks in the kitchen. America in a nutshell.
Plus the forever leader thing only happened ~10 years ago. That's too recent. I would only ever call a country politically stable if it hasn't changed in like 100 years. The US, for better and worse, politically has barely changed in 250 years. Sucks for Americans (but not entirely) but great for the world. When Xi declared himself forever leader, that basically reset the clock back to 0 years. Plus once Xi goes out of power, that basically resets the clock again because new leader, new policy.
At the end of the day, when you have a lot of something you want to keep safe (like your business), you want to put it with the person whose situation hasn't changed in the longest time. You don't even care necessarily whether that person is good. You just want that stability.
Unfortunately that hasn't really worked with China, which is why the world is starting to decouple from China; the CPP still prioritizes its institutional needs over "The People", which is ironic since they're supposed to be working for "The People."
That's probably why the CPP is scared of the people and tries to control them.