The author of this article, Grant Newsham, has made a second career out of whipping up fear over the China-threat.
But are we making more out of a Chinese threat than there is? China, unlike some other countries, hasn't invaded anyone since its month-long adventure into Vietnam some 45 years ago. China's neighbors are almost all allied with the US. Even North Korea, China's "ally", doesn't seem too afraid of or friendly towards China. China is not a self-contained empire like the Soviet Union was.
China's rise as a great power has been based on capitalism (state-run) & trade (if uneven) with the very countries which would oppose it in the event of war. It stinks that Western & east Asian countries have become more reliant on trade with China (and this needs to be reversed) but China is just as reliant on that global trade. I'm much happier with a trade war with China than a shooting one.
China is building a large army, navy & air force. So what? Even Taiwan - the country which should fear China more than anyone - isn't too upset, i.e their defense budget makes Lithuania's look robust. China is buliding more nuclear weapons, but I'm more worried about a country like Pakistan with nukes than China, which is a reasonable & responsible world actor. The won't be nuking anyone anytime soon. Even North Korea having a nuclear weapons program, once viewed as unacceptable, is becomoing easier to live with. If Iran got nuclear weapons would that be much different? Probably not. It would be used for cheap political sound-bites in the US, but that's it.
Is China ready to surrender its economic progress of a war to reunite with Taiwan? Maybe, but the meat grinder that is the Russo-Ukrainian War may give them some cause to question the certainty of a quick conquest of that runaway province. It Russia couldn't take Kiev & Kharkov, both just a few miles of flat land over the Russian border, is it likely that China could launch a successful amphibious invasion (not really accomplished by anyone since the US at Okinawa in 1945) to take Taiwan?