I've heard/read of that too, and remember having a cognitive dissonance when reading about a chinese company offering some very advanced metallurgy to german companies, some time not longer than a year ago. I can't find it anymore now, just https://3dprint.com/266401/formnext-pm-south-china-partners-... but it is not the same, just in a similar domain.

Right, any comparison would need to be done within the context of what they are optimizing for. China's priority right now seems to be securing the S. China Sea.

There's also nuclear weapons as a concern. I'm not sure we're quite talking mutually assured destruction, but we wouldn't want to go there. So far, nuclear deterrence has held up.

There's a lot of ways to fight a war. Conventional military technology likely wouldn't be involved on any battleground we would find ourselves on with China.

What about cyber capabilities?

For a hot war, China seems underequipped, but this doesn't seem the most relevant anyways.

Cyber and proxy war-like capabilities seem more important in this day and age. From what I can tell China leads in cyber capabilities versus the US. And they've been able to expand in the South China Sea without much retaliation so far, so maybe they're even doing alright on the other.