As China's ruling Communist Party celebrates its auspicious anniversary, the debate is intensifying over how to deal with the renewed prominence of authoritarian values at the heart of the world's second largest economy. For the Communist Party, this is meant to be a moment for basking in the warm adulation of the masses, not for talk of a new Cold War. And Max Baucus, the former US Democratic Party Senator who served as US ambassador to China from 2014 to 2017, finds himself in agreement. "The vast bulk of people in China… care very little about a change in the party because they're more concerned about their own lives," he says. "Living standards in China have risen dramatically in the last 20 years and they're very happy about that." What to do, if anything, about the Communist Party's tightening grip on power, the growing personality cult of its leader Xi Jinping, and the draconian direction of its domestic policies is one of the defining international policy debates of our time. And while it divides opinion in Washington and Europe - between those arguing for ideological confrontation and those, like Mr Baucus, for continued strategic engagement - such differences may well be much harder to glean inside China. Cai Xia is a retired professor from Beijing's elite Central Party School, who spent her life working with and training senior officials until her growing doubts and criticisms forced her into effective exile last year. She doesn't buy the idea that the Chinese people don't want political change, nor the notion that engagement with the Communist Party is better than the alternative. "It's not too late to change China from an autocratic system to a democratic system," she says. "The earlier the better, for China and the whole world. Even though Xi Jinping calls for a 'shared future for all mankind', he has already launched the Cold War and it never stops."