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“Thousands of years of Chinese history show China practically never winning any sort of major military conflict, other than internal ones. Draws and outlasting enemies sometimes, is about it.”

China has controlled the same area for about 5000 years. Thats better than anyone else has managed. Areas like Nepal have fallen to them where the Chinese essentially wipe out the existing culture and replace it with their own.

“China would be a Japanese province today, but for the action of US arms.”

Perhaps, the Japanese were brutal but did not have the size or population to control China for a long time. The Chinese tend to take the long view and would eventually kick the japanese out.

“There is no historical basis for the pretence that China has a special attritionist way of war and a boundless appetite for it, overwhelming less numerous foes.”

China could field more troops than any other country. They wouldn’t be the best armed but they would be dedicated.

The Asian mindset is much different than the European, Middle Eastern, or American mindset. They tend to think long term and don’t suffer from commitment anxiety like we do.

On top of their military is their economic power. They have reached out into the world and could do severe economic damage to other countries.

"China has controlled the same area for about 5000 years"

No, they really haven't. The best that can be said is that those controlling the area have found it useful to learn Chinese as a language.

The Japanese were not there for a short period of time, but for over a decade, and they didn't leave because the Chinese outlasted them, they left because the US air force burned Japan to the ground. The Chinese had all the population you please at the time, but no internal unity, no military traditions, no bravery in the field to speak of, and emphatically did not have any unstoppable willingness to take any level of casualties the Japanese might inflict. As a fact, entire Chinese armies on paper numbering hundreds of thousands of soldiers, flat ran away from single Japanese divisions with bolt action rifles and a handful of light machineguns.

The Chinese fought much better in Korea, with Russian training, equipment, and help, as well as veteran troops from their civil war. But the US still inflicted 20 to 1 losses on them and upward, without being overwhelmed by numbers at all. The Chinese were overwhelmed by capital and firepower.

The Chinese fought OK against India, without either side being terribly serious about it or high losses for either side. But showed no brilliance in military operations, and didn't overwhelm anybody with numbers. Oh right, they barely had numbers, fighting India.

Then they fought very poorly against the veteran North Vietnamese, losing a hundred thousand men and never making it more than a few miles from the border. They had all the numbers you please, and the NVA did not have far superior capital for war, unlike the US in Korea. But the NVA were veterans and tough as nails, and the Chinese were conscripts and soft as suburbanites, and no government willingness to sustain losses translated down to the infantry in the field, and for that matter the tolerance for loss of prestige and public fiasco wasn't very high at the top, and they gave it up rather rapidly.

So much for the claim that Chinese soldiers will be more dedicated than others, and only an armaments disparity could ever beat them. For that matter, the armaments disparity with Japan was slight, though present - notably in the air. But basically the Chinese couldn't face even Japanese infantry with similar weapons - just like the NVA, the Japanese simply had superior soldiers to anything the Chinese could field.

And this is not a new development. China couldn't defend itself from western colonialists, before the Japanese. It couldn't defend itself from Russians before that - it was Japan that contained Russia in Manchuria, not Chinese armies. They couldn't hold out the Mongols. China was regularly invaded from the steppes, and tended to deal with it by assimilating the conquerors as a new ruling class, not by militarily defeating them.

China is a great nation because of its civilization, its arts, and in recent times its productive work and trade. It is not a great nation because of any military virtue it has ever possessed. It is in fact a tragedy that some in the leadership do not understand this and are seeking aggrandizement as a military matter - a procedure that emphatically does not work, in the long run or the short. But that is particularly doomed in the hands of a civilization with this track record, in which military achievement is literally a matter ancient history, and for whom nothing of consequence is in prospect by military means.

China would be vastly better off giving up on trying to wrestle with the rest of the world - doing so will only draw on it a containing coalition, already nearly formed under US auspices, that vastly outweighs it in every metric - including population. The neighboring states that do not wish to see China expand militarily have half again its population, five times its economy, and ten times its military power - minimum.

The US has had a determined policy for over 150 years that was friendly to China, expected great things from trade with China, and sought to keep all foreign imperialist powers out of the country, to help it achieve independence, and to ensure freedom to trade for those within China, and for others with it. Belatedly and after horrible internal errors and serious struggles, including a major war waged on China's behalf, a direct collision under its early communist government, and tens of millions killed by misguided policies of that government - this policy has, since Deng Xiaoping, been crowned with essentially complete success. To China's lasting enrichment, and potentially to the lasting benefit of the rest of the world.

To throw all that away on military adventurism would be a mistake at least as large as Mao's assorted economic catastrophes, and would probably kill as many Chinese and cost the country as many decades of fruitless wasted efforts. Time will show whether Chinese leaders are really that stupid. Or better yet, maybe some of the people of China will take matters into their own hands, reject the route of chestbeating competition and the ashes it will bring in train, and throw over the whole wretched business - and the leaders selling it.

That would be the civilized thing to do. Let's see whether China is actually civilized.

But trying to scare the world? Forget it. We weren't scared of Joe Stalin with atom bombs. We weren't scared by Hitler at the gates of Moscow. We aren't going to be scared off by a population statistic.