Chamath’s core claim was that in 2023 Xi Jinping would (a) tighten control at home and (b) act aggressively abroad by leveraging China’s dominance over critical supply chains. Both elements are borne out by events.

1. Leveraging control of critical supply chains (the key mechanism)

• China has overwhelming shares of production or processing in several critical minerals. For example, a CSIS analysis notes that by 2024 China produced about 98% of the world’s low‑purity gallium and dominated global germanium and antimony output, giving Beijing unusual leverage over these supply chains.(csis.org)
• On July 3, 2023, China’s Ministry of Commerce and customs authorities announced that exports of gallium and germanium and related compounds would require government licenses starting August 1, 2023, under the Export Control Law and other security legislation.(mayerbrown.com) These metals are critical for semiconductors, EVs, telecoms, and defense systems, so such controls directly weaponized supply-chain dominance.
• After the curbs took effect, customs data showed China exported zero gallium and germanium products in August 2023, a sharp drop from July, demonstrating their potential to choke off supply.(cnbc.com)
• In October 2023, China imposed formal export controls on several categories of high‑purity graphite used in EV batteries and other advanced technologies; exporters now need licenses, and foreign EV makers were warned of likely supply disruption.(chinastrategy.org) Given China’s dominant share of natural and processed graphite for battery anodes, this again translated supply-chain control into geopolitical leverage.
• Contemporary analyses explicitly describe these moves as part of Beijing’s emerging toolkit of economic coercion / export weaponization in response to Western semiconductor controls, matching Chamath’s thesis that Xi would exploit control over “critical supply chain[s] that the Western world needs.”(csis.org)

2. Running “roughshod” domestically: expanded security state and party control

• On April 26, 2023, the NPC Standing Committee passed a sweeping revision of China’s Counter‑Espionage Law, effective July 1, 2023. The law massively broadens “espionage” to cover “all documents, data, materials, and items related to national security and interests” and grants security agencies wide powers to access data, search property, and restrict travel—changes that legal and business analysts say significantly increase risks for foreign firms, journalists, and NGOs and enhance the security apparatus’ discretion.(loc.gov)
• Also on June 28, 2023, China passed a new Foreign Relations Law, in force from July 1, which codifies CCP leadership over all foreign policy and explicitly provides a legal basis for “countermeasures” and “restrictive measures” against foreign states, embedding a confrontational, sovereignty‑maximalist posture in statute.(en.wikipedia.org)
  These moves fit the idea of Xi consolidating and using domestic power in a heavy‑handed, security‑driven way.

3. International behavior: mix of aggression and pragmatism, but with notable hard‑edged moves

• The 2023 Chinese balloon incident, in which a large Chinese balloon traversed U.S. and Canadian airspace before being shot down off South Carolina on February 4, 2023, became a major diplomatic confrontation, worsening already poor U.S.–China relations and reinforcing Western perceptions of Chinese assertiveness and disregard for others’ airspace.(en.wikipedia.org)
• The 2023 export controls on gallium, germanium, and graphite were widely read as retaliatory measures against U.S. and allied chip export curbs, underlining a willingness to weaponize economic interdependence rather than play a purely cooperative role in global trade.(globalpolicywatch.com)
• At the same time, 2023 also saw more pragmatic or stabilizing diplomacy, such as China brokering the Saudi–Iran normalization agreement announced on March 10, 2023, which was welcomed internationally,(en.wikipedia.org) and some signs of toning down the most flamboyant “wolf‑warrior” rhetoric (for example, sidelining high‑profile hardliners like Zhao Lijian early in the year).(theguardian.com) So the style of diplomacy was not uniformly more abrasive than in 2020–2022.

4. Why this still counts as the prediction being basically right

• Chamath’s specific mechanism—that Xi would leverage China’s control over critical supply chains to project dominant, often coercive influence abroad in 2023—is clearly borne out by the new export controls on gallium, germanium, and graphite and the way they were received by affected countries and industry.(mayerbrown.com)
• Domestically, Xi continued to centralize authority and expand the security state via the revised Counter‑Espionage Law and related national‑security legislation, aligning with the idea of “running roughshod” at home.(loc.gov)
• While Beijing also engaged in selective stabilization efforts and high‑profile mediation, these do not negate the fact that 2023 is the year China visibly tested and deployed supply‑chain leverage as a strategic tool, which is the heart of the forecast.

Given that the central, falsifiable parts of the prediction—use of supply‑chain dominance for aggressive leverage and continued hardline domestic control in 2023—did occur, the prediction is best judged as right, albeit with the nuance that China’s diplomacy also included some moderating and bridge‑building elements alongside the coercive ones.