Understanding of China in the west is not advanced by not taking him seriously.
I use the word "him" deliberately. China is not a her. China is a growing, strong potential adversary - one with a history of military study 20 times longer than our country has even existed. A nation of fighters. Of competitors. Of people who have learned to be quite tough, by the circumstances they have been surrounded by.
While we argue amongst ourselves here, to try to keep the welfare mentality from completely destroying our ability to work, produce and innovate - China has methodically been dismantling the "iron rice bowl" of state handouts, slowly teaching 1.2 billion people how to (compete with America).
Remember the Asian students you went to college with. Now ponder for a moment that just the Chinese component of that situation outnumber Americans by approximately 5 to 1. The population under 30 in China, is larger than our entire country - retirees and all.
Remember next the fact: Chinese want boy babies. Baby girls are still at risk their first few days. Resulting in an excess population of young males who - won't have a wife. A HUGE excess population of young males. Who are approaching peak potential military age, as the Chinese economy continues to gain momentum.
Combine that 50 million or so unmarried guys, a massive and growing cash surplus measuring in the hundreds of trillions of US dollars, a historical chip the size of Nanjing - and the last thing anyone should do, is waving off China's potential for good (or for bad) so dismissively.
We had better take China seriously. They take us seriously, and have been studying us for a long, long time.
The last thing we should do, is look at China and not recognize that the trends between our nations - financial, military, educational, demographic - all seem to be pointing (clearly, in the opinion of this poster) toward potentially difficult times ahead.
The US as total assets of around $100 trillion but the Chinese have cash assets of hundreds of trillions, in US dollars no less? Now that's impressive!
And meanwhile the Chinese are rather drastically reducing their troop strength; one of their big problems now is a lot of unemployed and unhappy former military men.
It's not some grand devious plan to have lots of boys for a huge army. Anyway, not like masses of cannon fodder would be relevant in any war with the US anyway.