Rule of Law: It may be that CN is getting ready for a Biden administration, which seems like it would focus more on using international law to justify actions, and thus wants to set up a legal framework to justify its actions. For example, if Biden rejoins the WTO and pursues actions against China on trade via it, CN will want legal support to fight. Having a more solid legal framework makes it easier to justify actions, and also lets domestic and foreign audiences where the red lines are.

Financial Crisis: Talk about financial crisis tends to veer between two extremes: everything is great, and everything will collapse. Based on past experiences, such as Japan's Lost decade or the EU bond crisis in 2009, the most likely scenario is that Chinese regulators are able to keep kicking the can down the road, avoiding crisis but letting debt drag down growth for an extended period (see Japan).That will also be politically tough, but maybe not into the latter half of the 2020s or even the 2030s.

Australia: I think China has figured that whatever they do, the relationship with Australia can't get any worse, so this is their method to let the Australians know what they need to do to get Chinese trade back. The Chinese are hoping this bears fruit in a couple of years, using the pressure on S. Korea over THAAD as a template. After a couple of years of economic pain, S. Korea has pretty much given in to Chinese demands and tread very carefully around Chinese sensitivities. So its not unreasonable for China to think this has a chance of happening in several years as economic pain takes its toll; if not, its not like China made the situation much worse.

I do find it interesting that this economic coercion works much better on S. Korea than Australia, when its arguable that Australia is more dependent on China than S. Korea is. I think it could be something cultural - where S. Koreans just don't see China as a military threat and have some affinity with the culture, whereas the Australians see China as a military threat and view the Chinese with much more suspicion.

Bonus Topic: I think the US / CN relationship will stabilize a bit, but definitely will be in a period of a cold peace/slight cold war where the US tries to limit China on all fronts. The 2020s will likely see growth in China start to slow dramatically as debt reaches it's limit and demographics work against it (sounding very much like Japan). The ironic thing is that if growth slows too fast and things really start to fall apart in China, that is when China is at its most dangerous, whereas if China can keep things stable on a gradual glide path down (ala Japan) we may have a much more peaceful outcome.