I think the one thing that will slow that particular scenario is the fact the elites are not an unified as they might appear.

Consider this;

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/02/bankruptcy-for-moderna-definitely-pfizer.html

When you are talking millions of people, it's not culture or politics, so much as it's physics and biology.

China's social credit system will only work as long as the economy can continue to grew, keeping the majority of people focused. When that becomes unsustainable, then they find they are sitting on a bomb. Eastern philosophy is traditionally more circular, but with communism and capitalism, they have absorbed some fairly Western, linear paradigms.