When I went to China (which was about a decade ago at this point), I was struck by an impression that the CCP had already picked the low hanging fruit, so to speak.

Coming out of Maoism, there were a tremendous number of ways to liberalize the economy that posed minimal risk to the rulers and were even to their benefit.

However, they hit a point where further moves towards free markets would come at the expense of political power. There was a phrase for how they were trying to proceed that translated to something like "groping for stones in a riverbed to stand on". In other words, they had no idea what to do and knew they were on the verge of falling over and being swept away.