Only if it were just Hong Kong

Our relationship with China just went from bad to worse, and most Americans don’t even realize that we just witnessed one of the most critical foreign policy decisions of this century. The U.S. Senate just unanimously passed the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019”, and the Chinese are absolutely seething with anger. Violent protests have been rocking Hong Kong for months, and the Chinese have repeatedly accused the United States of being behind the protests. Whether that is true or not, the U.S. Senate has openly sided with the protesters by passing this bill, and there is no turning back now.

Xi has a couple more Hong Kongs inside the mainland which do not receive the same coverage.  And that is Xi's main worry.  Xi is trying to maintain a bogus 'This time is different' in that face of a thousand years doinbg this same centralization/decentraization cycle.

Don't ask me, go talk to the classic China history experts, they will tell you the same. Xi needs to admit that this time is a lot like the 30 or 40 other times Chinese culture has done this. Then Xi can modify something small and 'This time is slightly different' than the normal cycle, it is diminished a bit.  Take the low bar, Xi, otherwise you could fuck things up quite badly.

My mind, absent priors, tells me that 'One county three systems' might just get Xi through the cycle.

We have the same issue, a longer cycle, very painful. We are faced with the same impossible trilemma, we have to keep an eye on migration and federal structure, as well as budgeting over a generation and managing the regime change cycle. We have to adapt 'one Swamp, three systems'.  Watch how we do it, we wait until the edge of civil war, then we have a civil war, of all the stupid things to do. Xi needs to avoid that stupidity.