China’s Army posts “Preparing for war!”

The Ukraine would disagree with you, not only on this but your calls for them to roll over to the Russians

Except, they do know their own history. It's only the more recent debacles by the CCP that are heavily censored.. but their ancient culture/history is heavily pushed in schools, and universities. There are nuanced differences with western history for the region, but it's pretty much the same except where it intersects with modern politics such as Tibet.

Besides which, the internet has never been completely blocked, and anyone with a wee bit of patience can get whatever info they want sourced from western sites. Also, there's a busy business of importing books from Taiwan, and Korea, which tends to bypass many of the government censorship checks.

As for why history matters, well.. the Chinese understand the difficulties of ruling over a huge territory containing many different ethnic/cultural groups.. so they're not going to be going on any rampage to acquire territory. That's an important lesson from history to consider. They'll take opportunities to nibble at their neighbours borders for any area that already has a Chinese population, but it's unlikely that they would expand beyond that. Modern history has shown the cost of occupying territory of a hostile population, and China has enough problems as it is.

You can appreciate the Chinese mindset by taking into account the historical cultural conditioning that has been going on for centuries, and continues to this day. Confucius is a great example of that, as he's taught in every aspect of Chinese society.. and it's reinforced in how most people behave, or interact with each other. There are heaps of traditional perspectives going back as far as the Ming Dynasty that are still acted out today.. because the CCP saw the advantage in reinforcing the conditioning that already existed, and built upon it. Chinese people are generally very predictable.. until they become emotional. That's when they become dangerous.. and worth stepping lightly around.

Don't disregard history when it comes to Asian societies. We've mostly put our traditional conformity/behaviours/perspectives behind us, but they haven't.

China was happy with controlling the Asia region through influence, and the performance of Tribute from their neighbours. They didn't need to expand outwards because they had everything they needed within their own territories, or handed to them from others. It wasn't due to any fear of foreigners.. although the fear of foreign culture was related to the effect on the peasant population, which is mirrored in most Asian nations, including those who were more expansionist.

Modern China wants a return to the old days when they're the Asian superpower, able to bully their neighbours into bowing their heads, and ultimately bask in the praise of being so wonderful. Expanding much beyond their own borders would weaken them too much.. however, they will seek to create allies that are subservient to them, through whatever means available to them.

Keep dreaming

Why? They've backed down heaps of times already. While I lived in China, there were often reports and news releases by the PLA about responding to US/Australian naval vessels in the South China sea, going so far as to mobilise their reserves, issuing bitchy rhetoric, and... then they backed down. Again. And again.

The Chinese leadership love to posture. The risk is that people will continue to think they're posturing when they actually commit, but as Yurt has said, any military commitment by China would set the whole of Asia against them. While individually none of the Asian nations are a threat to China, combined they provide a wide range of specialisms, and opens China up to warfare on just about all their borders.