There's generally a problem of overrating China's current military capabilities...largely because of simple "bean-count" analyses. Had the same problem regarding Iraq in the runup to the Gulf War.
They tend to ignore maintenance (most of China's massive total of submarines are ancient ex-Russian boats from the 50s and 60s that never leave port, for example) and training (basically, the entire Chinese military has no combat experience whatsoever.)
There's also an over-focus on high end weapons systems just purchased, or planned to be purchased, ignoring the crappy stuff that most of the PLA would have to fight with.
One driver of a lot of this is that people are less interested in an objective analysis of the PLA than they are in bashing Clinton. While bashing Clinton is a worthy cause, people feel a need to portray the PLA as an amazing military force, and have the SOLE cause of it being Clinton's technology transfer.
I gotta bump that one for sure. I am not a military expert, but they are a little more mouth than gun IMO.
None the less, their intentions half the time are bad. Real bad.
It also all depends on what kind of war one is talking about.