That all fits with my understanding. Except your opinion at the end that the manufacturing of consent (great book btw) is only facially about China but actually against the Western pleb. I think instead that power always seeks more power (against the Western pleb, yes) but also seeks to neutralize threats to it's power, which realistically is the Chinese state. So IMHO it is both. I take John Mearsheimer's view on this.
If you are concerned about great risks to humanity such as climate change, nuclear war, gain of function research, or the emergence of out of control general A.I., then you should consider that the only approaching-reliable way of containing those risks is for humanity to cooperate on them worldwide. That means that in at least some sense the West should be maintaining friendly relationships with China, not posturing for war. Because in a war posture there is no hope of containing their research which becomes a desperate attempt to win. E.g. we need to make hyper-intelligent missiles... oops! or we need to make a bioweapon... oops! Etc.
Now more than ever before we need to normalize relations and cooperate. The battle for power seems so childish to me in the face of the real threats.