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Islamic terrorism is a real thing. China is mostly sable rattling. It can do more, but chooses not to.
But we're talking about 'threat' here. I can be threatened by someone doing nothing. The US is threatened by China doing its 'sabre rattling' when that sabre rattling is building a giant fleet and powerful military. Hitler didn't do anything substantive in foreign policy but what could loosely and broadly be described as 'sabre rattling' from 33 to Anschluss but he threatened a lot of people in that time by making Germany much stronger.
Hitler was way worse , and this is not just based on hindsight but the ideology he espoused. he wanted a 4th Reich that would last 1000 years. this was in 1934. He knew what he wanted and wasted little time to try to achieve it. china has not done much in almost half a century. China is mostly a technocratic state that wants to realize some ill-defined Marxist utopia in some perpetually indefinite future, not a militaristic one like Nazi Germany. Realizing this goal means China cannot act too rash. One of the fundamental assumptions of Marxism is that capitalistic states will collapse due to contractions inherent in capitalism, so there is no need to invade or conquer them.
I think that's a radical feminist argument, actually.
I mostly agree with you, although I am not sure how many CCP people even believe in the Marxist millennium. Their Marxism seems largely in service of their technocracy: non-communist societies are full of contradictions, but these can be resolved through giving power enlightened and benevolent experts. German social democracy without the "democracy" part. Fundamentally, it's actually a very similar ideology to many Western politicians, except that the latter at least officially believe that competitive democracy is an essential form of accountability, whereas the CCP believes in internal party and heavily pre-selected democracy.
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That China hasn't done much yet could be either due to their desires or their capabilities. If it's desires we have no problem, they're pacific. But if it's capabilities, then we have a threat. Once they feel like a campaign is winnable, then they'll launch it.
If you build a powerful military, you presumably have some reason to use it. The US does feel threatened by China doing that, that's what the whole pivot to Asia was about, that's why they're scrambling to build up the navy again, develop high-end firepower. The Pentagon describes China as the 'pacing threat' they need to keep ahead of. It very much seems to be a question of capabilities. Fifty years ago, China was willing and capable to push back the US from its immediate land neighbors in Korea and Vietnam. Why would they not want to push the US further back now that they're stronger? They find the US threatening, partially from an ideological/political perspective (since the US harasses and sabotages non-democracies routinely) and they want Taiwan deeply.
In addition to Taiwan and various small islands, China has many strategic interests all around the world. They're now a very large economy, they have interests everywhere, citizens they want to protect, resources they want to secure, markets they want to dominate. The US has a bunch of naval bases everywhere for similar reasons, as did the British. China is building bases where they can for those reasons.
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