We also have the edge on China in the aircraft carrier dept. They have 3 and we have 20. Obviously, our military is built for offense. Because we have friendly neighbors and large bodies of water protecting us, we need to go looking for wars.
And here's the thing. We tried to project military strength all over the world, while China is engaging in something called the "Belt and Road" initiative, where they go into third world countries, and help them build infrastructure to move their products around.
We antagonize the rest of the world by bombing it... China gains favor by helping it.
The other part of our relationship with China is that we look at Taiwan, Hong Kong, TIbet and the Uyghurs in terms of human rights and democracy. China looks at those regions through the lens of national sovereignty, and how the only reason why these places aren't fully under Beijing's control is that in the past foreign powers infringed on China's sovereign control of these regions.
Hong Kong became a British colony because of the Concessions forced on China in the Opium Wars. (You know, where the British Empire went to war for the right to sell addictive drugs to the Chinese people!) Despite that, China did not roll into Hong Kong in 1949 when the British Empire was in its death throes. It waited until the lease ran out and allowed it a certain level of autonomy.
Tibet- China allowed the corrupt Lama class to have control of the region and the British exploited it, until they moved in and the Dalai Lama fled. Contrary to what the Dalai Lama tells Richard Gere, their rule of Tibet was cruel and life was pretty miserable for most Tibetans.
Taiwan- Illegally taken from China by Japan, the US protected the remnants of Chiang Kai-shek's corrupt regime to set up there and they were a fascist dictatorship we supported all the way up to the 1990's.
As for the Uyghurs - The Russians moved into that region and supported their semi-independence, and then withdrew when China went Communist. The Uyghers have cooperated with various international Islamist terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda.
In short, China is NOT our enemy, and there are people in Washington (both parties) that are unnecessarily antagonizing them over non-issues.
