China is pretty much warmongering against all the allies of the US – Japan, Philippines and Vietnam mainly.
This is a bit the consequence of the Red Line in Syria (crossed and not respected.
China warmongering achieves two objectives
– Distract the population from the local economic issues
-Shake the confidence of the US allies in a US Saviour of Last Resort – so weakening the position of the US.
It almost like the two other superpowers (China and Russia) are sensing the weakness (or better the unwillingness to be strong, call it decadence) of the reigning superpower.
The issues with this thinking can be two folded
-They could miscalculate and there could be a point where the Sleeping Giant awakes
-Other two times in the last century the US (and before them the UK) chose a non-interventionist posture (both period led by Democrats). These two periods are both linked to the years before the First and Second World War as the non-intervention led to catastrophic wars (there is a theory that links Democrats to the 2 Wars and the “interventionist” Republican to not leading to the 3rd War World …but to the Cold War (which, by the way, led to similar amount of deaths of the 1 World War…but in almost 50 years)