Well said. One thing I’d add is that it wasn’t only Putin going all in, but Xi’s own strategic impatience. China needed at least another generation to grow into its strengths as a world power, but Xi had, for various reasons, convinced himself that he, not his successors, would be the one to see it all through. By finishing the job Mao had started, Xi would be the one lauded by history as the one inheriting Mao’s mantle.
Xi likes to wax poetic about geostrategic “changes not seen in a century”. Ironically, his own ego and hamfistedness has given the West a once in a century opportunity to kneecap China and prevent it from consolidating into a true world power.