See The Return of Authoritarian Great Powers (Foreign Affairs)
I think rather that China is practicing mercantilism, which wiki defines as:
“Mercantilism is the economic doctrine that government control of foreign trade is of paramount importance for ensuring the military security of the state.”
In this case the security of the State is the security of the position of the Communist Party in control of the State, where the Party is the State and the State is the Party.
We see leadership of the Party saying they must create jobs in order to absorb the peasants who are coming off the farm and out of the hinterlands. This is why they are willing to buy our paper money and conspire with debt-mongers in the US to recycle that money into internal Chinese wages through which they pay for jobs and export goods no matter how little money they make on the exports.
In the process of course, they are also building the infrastructure and industrial capacity to built arms and to be far better positioned than at any time in Chinese history to prevail against any foe. This becomes more and more true the longer the one child policy induces couples to perform sex selection abortion so the only child that government allows them to have is a male.
What is a government inclined to do with massive industrial capacity to build arms, a pile of money and tens of millions of excess young men? If history is any guide, that government will find it easy to gin up a war to wage.
“War is the health of the State” —Randolph Bourne