China’s TFR (total fertility rate) is only about 1.0. You need a replacement rate of about 2.1 just to maintain the population.
China has a net negative immigration rate (more people leaving than moving there).
China can’t afford to lose any warm bodies, discontented or otherwise.
But I think a key lesson of the Roman Republic is that you can’t rely on tradition and the social contract, of which the Romans had many. Things like the cura annonae or grain dole were seen as a key responsibility of the government to its less well off citizens. Roman generals at the time were political appointees and tradition required that they disarm their troops before entering Rome because that could be seen as trying to unduly influence the democratic process.
Warning: A vast oversimplification follows: It is more accurate to say that populism caused the end of the Roman Republic, not the Roman Empire. In democratic Rome, most of the power was held by the senate and equestrian class but the Tribune of the Plebes (elected by the common people, as the name suggests) was a surprisingly powerful office. The TofP could introduce legislation, had veto power over the consuls, and so on.
Populist TofP’s like Gracchus and Sulpicius successfully advanced a number of important reforms such as land reform and immigrants rights. These reforms were not popular among the Job Creator class but the plebes were inclined to occasionally riot or even revolt, and tossing the plebes an occasional bone was seen as necessary to maintain order Gracchus and Sulpicius used populist discontent to their advantage, pushing the limits of what tradition and the constitution allowed.
Around this time, there was a prominent Roman consul, general, and defender of the Job Creator class named Sulla. Sulpicius cut a backroom deal with one of Sulla’s political rivals that got Sulpicuis’s land reform done, but screwed over Sulla.
Sulla turned his army around and in defiance of tradition captured Rome which was virtually undefended. Sulla declared himself dictator, re-wrote the constitution doing away with the plebian reforms, stripped veto power from the tribunes, and beheaded Sulpicius. Some scholars say this was the end of the Roman Republic.
Incredibly, Sulla retired and declared Rome a constitutional Republic again. But the republic only lasted for a few decades until Julius Caesar also violated tradition by using his army to seize power, ending the republic once and for all.
Jan. 6 showed us we can’t rely on our tradition of democracy and peaceful transition of power. To this day, many politicians will not condemn the actions of the Jan 6. rioters because they themselves hope to benefit by violent overthrow of the US government. In many cases, they have majority support of their constituents. We are fools if we don’t take them at their word.
By the way, preventing a Sulla/Caeser style military coup is the reason why the US Constitution makes the president the commander-in-chief of the military.
Blaming immigrants still seems to be a thing though.