The current blockchain is only slightly less centralized
Apart from that, most people basically don't care whether Bitcoin is centralized or not. All they care for are profits and nothing else but profits. If Jihan in some ingenious way makes them choose between losing the value of the coins on the "regular" blockchain and acquiring that value on his blockchain, they won't think twice (you can be dead sure of that). Further, what makes you think, first, that Jihan and his goons (who are collectively known as the mining cartel) have less coins than some obscure "whales", and, second, that some of these whales (say, Roger Ver) won't in fact prefer JihanCoin?
the current state of centralisation is kind of the elephant in the room. if it breaks out and starts smashing things like a bitmain controlled coin would i think enough people would start to object.
right now it's just about bearable enough but it's kind of a fragile precipice.
yeah, i think enough people would be lured by the money to stick around, but
it would only take one demonstration of their power to make things falterThere are quite a few centralized coins out there
For example, Ripple or Ethereum (and even Litecoin, to a certain degree, via Charlie Lee intervention), and the "controllers" have been exerting their power on a pretty regular basis. The famous Ethereum rollback is just one glaring example of that, and the hard fork that ensued doesn't seem to prosper, which it should according to your reasoning ("only one demonstration to make things falter"). But as I said it already, people won't care as long as the price will be rising. If it won't be rising, they will walk away even if this power is in fact NOT exerted at all. As no less famous saying goes, profits always trump prophets