In the next breath they'll joke about how majority of the top 10 most deadly wars in human history are Chinese civil wars.I don't think that American writers need any encouragement to say the things that their readers want to see. It's like how you can constantly find articles about how Taiwan needs to get more drones without the realizations that all drone parts come from China.
I'm not sure why this particular mindworm keeps persisting. Why do people think that China is going to keep playing nice even after Beijing decides that it's going to have to be a shooting war?