Interesting points, though I wonder why the new ideological discourse would be "circular." I imagine the Chinese would see it, like their adaptations of western technology and cost-benefit economic accounting, as a dialectical synthesis "with Chinese characteristics."

The new system underlying the "discourse" of reform and regeneration would be rule-based, not seemingly arbitrary, with the (extensive, authoritarian) interests of the CCP clearly demarcated. Within those new limits, foreigners could at least discover predictability. The defects of such an authoritarian "democracy" system would likely be Han/Chinese nationalism and the corruption endemic to one-party regimes.