>>63977363 (OP)Unlike Imperial Japan, modern China has next to zero actual territorial conquest ambitions outside of Taiwan, and even that is mostly a boomer talking point more than a real goal that the oligarchs want to force militarily.
Inside China, Taiwan isn't depicted as some evil, rebellious state that is a threat to the mainland but instead as a really nice tourist destination with great business. The reason is because China really, really, really, really wants Taiwan intact and (mostly) voluntarily, like Hong Kong.
Why?
Money
It was nationalism before the 80s, now in a post Deng Xiao Ping China it's just money
Chinese oligarchs love being filthy rich overlords with a literal peasant class beneath them to be the nearly costless human capital that makes their hedonistic lifestyles possible. Think Saudis.
Chinks aren't stupid. They're greedy and have no greater moral philosophy, manifesting in their low trust society that places no value on human life besides its potential for profit. But they're not stupid.
They know if things go from saber rattling and gunboat diplomacy to actual war, there's absolutely no way for China to maintain its fuel imports across the Indian Ocean.
Overland pipelines are laughably low capacity, and if things go hot they're not going to be able to depend on India or Russia to pick up any slack
>So why are they building up?A few reasons
1) They have a hawkish nationalist section just like any other superpower
2) The century of humiliation+WW2 makes the idea of an uninvadeable Chinese mainland a very popular goal
3) Bullying SEAmonkeys
4) Being able to influence the Pacific in the same ways the US has for 80 years
Keeping momentum in Chinese politics is very important. Nobody is more aware that China loses 100m+ people in civil wars every century since records existed than the Chinese. Keeping the hordes of serfs both satisfied and afraid of uprising is an existential goal that western societies don't understand the same way