Maybe the long term resolution involves recognizing that even if China is totalitarian, it's only within it's own borders. Unlike the cold war days, there's no race to convert countries to Communism or Democracy. China's main mode of interaction with other countries is through trade, it doesn't play the game of political/ideological proselytism. If democracy loses ground around the world, that's due more to it's own failings than a concerted push by China to replace it with totalitarianism. Spend more time and funds fixing the economic inequalities plaguing democratic society than wasting it on ineffective bogeymen like confronting China half a world away.