No dictator endangers his power by starting a war unless he is desperate for economic reasons, for a dictator it is much safer to use propaganda to intimidate his neighbors and his own citizens without risking losing everything in a battle.
It was the fuel embargo decreed by the US government that provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor.
But this historical experience cannot be extrapolated to the current situation of the Chinese dictatorship. If its pharaonic system of production and distribution collapses, due to a misuse of the wise and well-tested international trade rules, there are only three possible outcomes: implosion, at the cost of enormous suffering of its own citizens, territorial expansion, at the cost of enormous war spending that would wipe out what was left of its economy, or freeze, pretending to negotiate while waiting for the fifth column to succeed in placing a cowardly president in the White House. Would China's economy hold up long enough?
Let no one expect a peaceful solution such as holding elections... Power has only two emotions: contempt and fear.