by sspiker
It's neither good nor bad to use it frequently or sparingly, as long as you're not wasting it. It's all a matter of what you value and how your game is progressing.I'm in the camp of playing it sparingly. I prefer to be able to hold two cards if I get a really bad hand, and I prefer for my opponent to have to deal with all of his bad cards. I've found that usually games break open one way or another due to how opposing events are handled, rather than how you play your own events. So if you're trying to limit mistakes, keeping the China Card close is imperative.
That said, I'll gladly use it to flip Thailand or Pakistan unless its like 1/5 battlegrounds. I'll gladly use to enable play of Cultural Revolutions or Nixon with minimal gain for my opponent (always Space Ussuri, though). And I'll use it if I'm desperate to control a key battleground, and I need a 4ops.