>it's maintained by the grace of those who understand that often the real threat isn't the enemy, it's your fear of the enemy.

But how do you know that? Do you any such examples of how the CCP or China is dicussing politics amongst themselves to support that claim, their ideological leanings and papers or their own national strategies?

Sadly that's above the pay grade of everyone here only the rich folk that run the world get to see that on all sides :)

One idea would be to completely ignore news outlets and look at raw data imports, exports, official visits to try to identify geopolitical patterns algorithmically has anyone on HN attempted such a thing?

That might be true, and yet it's also true that enemies are not just a fictional concept, and letting them have undue influence that weakens your society probably isn't a good idea.