It is beginning to feel to me like the MAX may be a zombie that just doesn't know that it is dead yet. I have a hard time seeing how Boeing can charge the premium that they need to cover their development costs for this plane, and I have a hard time seeing how any fleet manager is going to be excited about upgrading their fleet. One more crash of a MAX for any reason and it is all over, so who wants to be sitting on a huge fleet of them that may be grounded again? Perhaps if Boeing had responded with something other than "we have complete confidence in the MAX" after the first crash and kept it up after the second, things would be different. What they really need now is a way to say they have fixed the problem and the process that created the problem, but they are too afraid to admit any liability (why?) and their baby steps in that direction always end up blaming the pilots. Total bluff may work in Trump world but not the rest of the world, and that is where they are selling these things. "We have replaced all of the doors and now they are safe" works, "Ignore the fact that two planes crashed, nothing to see here" doesn't.
Unfortunately for Boeing (but perhaps fortunately for the public) the grounding happened before any fleets were completely committed to the MAX. The schedule disruptions are painful but can be worked around, so nobody other than Boeing needs the MAX program to be successful. China will probably not let it fly again for a whole bunch of reasons unless Boeing sweetens the pot to some unreasonable level (large scale manufacturing moved to China) that Boeing would be foolish to accede to. So who knows. I think Boeing survives but they have to pull their heads out of the sand first, and probably axe a number of executives if for no other reason than to placate the people who report to those executives and are probably pretty pissed off right now.