China's facing multiple (IMO potentially disastrous) challenges:

• Regions with secessionist tendencies (notably the southern regions that have historically been more connected with the outside world, Szechuan, non-Han areas like Xinjiang and Tibet)
• Demographics (too few working people to support the elder generation) coming from Mao's one-child, plus the gender imbalance coming from gender selective abortions making it unlikely they can ever recover

(For a view of the above two, read pretty much anything by Peter Zeihan)

• Autocratic rule in which the autocrat hasn't a 'cabinet' of advisors (or anyone brave enough) to bring him bad news. So Zero-Covid, no matter what
• The end of super cheap unskilled labor from people moving off the farm
• Resistance from the rest of the world over China basically being a bad actor (use of MFA to facilitate 'dumping', IP acquisition 'by any means necessary" (for a look at how that happens on an individual manufactory basis, read Paul Midler's Poorly Made in China). Notably, that's coming out as tariffs and trade restrictions.

(The three just above are leading to international manufacturers migrating their intermediate assembly steps out of China)

• Limited energy supplies - and growing worse as Russian oil leaves the market (not to mention Russia's technical issues with the Siberian wells now that the 'majors' are gone) Peter Zeihan again for how that's going.
• A horrific drought (check YouTube channel China Insights for that)
• Ongoing collapse of the construction and banking sectors. Read Dinny McMahon's China's Great Wall of Debt for how that started; China Insights for how it's going. Decent economist-technical overview here
• Friction with the US, not just what's in #5, but over Taiwan. Pretty sure concerns about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and resultant destruction of TSMC was a major factor in initiating the "Chips Act" - but also probably everything above
• The US is gradually stepping back from the Bretton Woods Accords (important part here is that the US Navy - at US expense - does global overwatch of 'blue water shipping).

Again, Peter Zeihan on BWA - and how/why the US is stepping back. BTW, he makes his living giving presentations to investors, military brass, farmer’s associations trying to figure world markets, etc. Some of those presentations make their way to YouTube. Pretty much all are worth a watch — as are the videos in Peter’s Zeihan on Geopolitics channel

If you’ve made it to here, congratulations! I tend to not (pretty much ever) do long form — to the point of not having put in the effort to have a clue how to just publish something. This is more of a brain dump of the little I know of what’s going on in China (and where I’ve gotten it).