Wars certainly do not dominate the news.
Only certain wars.
The explanation is, I think, two-fold and intertwined. It is an example of actual racism and appeasement of the ChiComs with leftover respect, even adulation, of the regime from the 60’s New Left days when “China” was seen as at the forefront of human evolution, socially and politically (remember Shirley MacClaine?). Simultaneously it became the cheap labor utopia. Unlimited slave or neo-slave labor.
If China were a European nation the outrage over their despotism would be never ending. But they are just Chinese. Our liberals don’t care.
They serve as a great market and partner for the technototalitarinism that our companies invented which is implemented in China, slowly being phased in here and in other “western” nations.
If there was active fighting going on between Hong Kong troops and Chinese invaders, complete with videos of Chinese ships being sunk, it would be all over the news. I’m not exactly sure what you expect anyone to cover on a day to day basis at this point, though. There are no battles, no speeches, no videos...it’s just sort of the same mundane oppression that’s been going on all over the world for a long time. Hell, it didn’t dominate the news even when it was the old Soviet Union oppressing white people in Eastern Europe. Not unless there was actual shooting like in 1956 or 1968.