Why does China think we will attack them??
"Why does China think we will attack them??"
Because we might. Imagine a world where china was wiped off the map. Manufacturing jobs for everyone and cheap oil. It has to look very attractive to 10% of the population of the US. Ok, extermination of over a billion people has its drawbacks but the people of the US have gotten used to the good life and being top dog in the world. Exterminating china would solve a lot of problems.
I will say that 90% of the US is opposed to this because they are decent people, but 10% of the US would kill their mother for cheap gas, lots of money and returning the US to top dog status. Hell, we have 20,000 people killing US citizens every year for a lot less than that.
More like counter attack them....Taiwan.
Because they intend to hit us asymmetrically...likely with proxies such as their sock-puppet North Korea and Iran.
They expect to hit us HARD and know we might go after them as the actual puppet-master.
They hope to deter us from our resorting to our nuclear retaliatory capability...which was meant to deter their attacks in the first place.
But such deterrence is clearly breaking down, and we refuse to engage in counter-asymmetrical warfare against them. After all, we can't be "protectionist." Nope, nope, nope, nope.
I guess they figure that we will be upset, once they actually do nuke L.A., instead of just threatening to do so. Not to mention all the other dirty tricks they have been playing on us around the world.