Wild if true.
"Twice in the final months of the Trump administration, the country’s top military officer was so fearful that the president’s actions might spark a war with China that he moved urgently to avert armed conflict.
In a pair of secret phone calls, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, that the United States would not strike, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and national political reporter Robert Costa.
One call took place on Oct. 30, 2020, four days before the election that unseated President Trump, and the other on Jan. 8, 2021, two days after the Capitol siege carried out by his supporters in a quest to cancel the vote.
The first call was prompted by Milley’s review of intelligence suggesting the Chinese believed the United States was preparing to attack. That belief, the authors write, was based on tensions over military exercises in the South China Sea, and deepened by Trump’s belligerent rhetoric toward China.
“General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay,” Milley told him. “We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.”
https://archive.is/nmNWr
Actually one of the United States' main foreign policy goals since the Boxer Rebellion in 1899 is to maintain what they call a "Open Door Policy" in China. Most important is open commerical access but also political access to stop anyone (especially the Chinese) from closing that door. It's why we started sanctioning Japan for invading China in WW2, why we drove a wedge between China and the Soviet Union, and why we are freaking out about China's ascendancy right now. If a president went off the rails and like declared a full economic embargo on China he'd definitely be Business Plotted right out of there.