Is strategy even involved? The CCP often displays an impressive ability of actually following through with strategy, but I'd be surprised if this capability didn't have any glaring blind spots. Chances are these changes are nothing more than a series of purely tactical decisions, either without any strategical thought or perhaps even despite considerations not unlike yours. Might have been frog in boiling water for the perpetrators as much as for the victims.
Of course there is a strategy, and not only from the CCP side. It's a power struggle to retain vs. subvert power between the Chinese state and the Western sphere of influence in East Asia. The battle lines have shifted from one outlying area of containment to another, from Korea (war, 1950-1953), Taiwan (war, 1950's), Vietnam (war, 1960's), Tibet (rebellion, 1959-1973), a detente after Nixon, back to color revolution in the late 80's (Tiananmen), Tibet again (rebellion, late 1980's), and Xinjiang (terrorism, 1990's to 2000's), Taiwan (1996), Tibet again (2008), Hong Kong (color revolution, 2003 to 2020), back to Xinjiang again (2018 to now), and in a major way, Taiwan (2016 to now).
It's funny people think these are all random occurrences or all the doing of the CCP. During the detente, even the Dalai Lama suddenly went to the "Middle Way" and shut up for 15 years.
