Also they're not really "dumping" EV's in Western markets. The automotive market traditionally made low margins like 5%, until EV's where they're now trying to make closer to 30%. They're just sticking to the old pricing model.

Western manufacturers have been caught with their pants down, they operated under the assumption car ownership would become a premium thing, like owning an iPhone. Basically thought they'd have a free lunch fleecing consumers.

China is in a weird place that is hard to predict. They have some troubling economic and demographic problems as you said, but also have built up strong tech and manufacturing capabilities. We could easily see China continue to grow in power, even if the middle class continues to be poor.

China also has large swaths of it's population still in a lower income bracket, especially the further you get from the coasts (though the demographics there are not much better). It's going to be very interesting to see what happens over the next few decades (and by interesting I hope in not a terrible way).

One of the theories of China's recent, intense sabre rattling is that demographically they'll be in no position to militarily take Taiwan in 20 years. So it's now/soon or never.

*its population

China will be able to easily field ten million soldiers in 20 years. Their military keeps strenghtening. Their demography woes will cause economic and social problems first, not military ones.

I believe this supposed rush to take Taiwan is more about Xi's personal ambitions rather than strategic pressure.

Seems like they are doing OK on the percentage of people who own their homes front:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_owne...

Home ownership is a meme. Congratulations, you're sitting next to other prosperous countries like Cuba.

There was a recent bloomberg article titled (from memory):

the fed has a problem. There are two US economies but only one rate.

The 95 v 5% split in the US with the middle class worse and worse is a problem. It'll be the same for China except that Chinese politicians are way more attuned to social cohesion compared to the west.