Capital will only ever do the most profitable thing. This is an iron law. China used it to their advantage to develop the productive forces in their country.
Capital does what the individual capitalists perceive as gaining the most profit for themselves, albeit sometimes as cartels. The capitalist system makes sure that they know this is things like cutting wages and destroying competition.
By this I just mean that capital can actually fail to find even higher profits so long as the more profitable regime would require a coordinated effort or would give up some of their power. Capitalists would make more profit if they reined in finance, but they constantly fail to do so, in part, because they gain short-term profits from dealing with finance. They can only see what’s right in front of themselves as the ruling class cogs in the machine of capital.
Capital will do what it takes to survive, not necessarily what makes the most profit. Capital absolutely will do protectionism and autarky if it’s deemed necessary for some form of capitalist class to administrate some working class. China’s gamble worked out because it was in the interests of the international bourgeoisie at the time.
Now that we’re seeing a re-emergence of ideologically coherent fascism/chauvinism there could arise a situation where the western nations cut off their own nose and break away from China in order to keep their own domestic bourgeoisie in power.
