China is either expanding their ambitions or being more open about their ambitions.
China is thinking big, based on the recent Pentagon report on Chinese military power:
Beijing’s goals of preeminence, to be achieved fully between 2035 and 2049, [is summarized] as follows: “complet[ing] its development and attain[ing] national rejuvenation, realizing an international status that Xi describes as a ‘global leader in terms of comprehensive national strength and international influence.’ A renewed PRC will have attained—among the Party’s many goals—its objectives to field a ‘world-class’ military and assume a leading position within an international order revised in line with Beijing’s overall foreign policy goal to establish what it refers to as a ‘community of common destiny (人类命运共同体)’….”
In so arguing, the 2021 CMPR moves well beyond earlier editions, which typically suggested that Beijing aimed for regional preponderance at most. Indeed, such has previously been the conventional wisdom among many scholars and analysts. It is even quite possible that many PRC officials in power two decades ago did not regard future global preponderance as either realistic or worth taking risks to pursue. Nevertheless, under Xi today, the PRC is far more powerful and pushy than many ever anticipated. It now has additional ambitious goals for the next three decades—the grandest and most strategic guiding policies of any great power today.
Or maybe China is just more open about what they ultimately want.
Of course, other power are reacting to the Chinese rise. America, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, India, and other smaller powers don't wish to be bullied into vassal status or lose territory to China's newest grandiose territorial claim-of-the-year. These potential victims increase their power and reach out to each other for allies.
Even the bizarrely hostile-to-NATO Russia might have been hit with the clue bat enough to stop appeasing China to join the coalition that is forming.
