China is actually quite predictable and with a stable (forever) leader it's even more predictable.
US poking China creates instability.
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.
Stability is the foundation of every working relationship and it is the sugar in a cookie. You can even work with an adversary as long as they are predictable.
Most countries have yet to achieve long-term stability. Stability is super difficult to achieve. China had it for a while before Xi.