The US and its allies are desperate to provoke China into some sort of major conflict because they know if things continue as is, without some massive international intervention, China will slowly but surely continue overtaking more and more political capital globally as the us empire shrivels off into endless internal conflict and utter incompetence. This is why theres so much recent attention in the past few years and now specifically and creating conflicts within and around China. Westerners still dream that they're going to push China into some sort of position where military and economic intervention would actually disrupt their economic development because its the only way to keep western capital hegemony intact.