Comment: China wants to poke the US in the eye

Why? Take a look at China's east coast, and what do you see?

Korea (US ally)
Japan (US ally)
Taiwan (US ally)
The Phillipines (US ally)

We've got them pretty well boxed in.

Let's take your last statment and turn it around: The ultimate goal is to isolate [China] and reduce [it] to a second-class world power, leaving the world stage open for a new unipolar world led by [the US].

That is, has been, and always will be the goal of the American empire. China and Russia will do anything they can to fight back against that.

So before you go pointing fingers, take a look at what they're responding to. The US has the biggest military budget in the world, by far.