From the outside it seems like China is a positive adversary for the west to have - they don't gain from military conflict and they seem to be well incentivized to just expand soft power and compete with the west economically.

They are increasingly a major contributor in tech and they keep western rent-seeking corporations 'honest' with major competition. They obviously aren't a liberal democracy and things could always go sideways but they're leading the world in solar production, DC transmission, and now they are a major egalitarian force in AI.

I'll take them over the Russian mafia state any day, for example.