The neo-con right has always used external threats to persuade people into foreign wars. Since we're technically a republic, the leaders have to at least pretend to convince the people to go to war.

Trump was an interesting case, because while he certainly used external threats as a rallying cry, he didn't use it to foment war. In fact, he was the only President in my life time to not start a new war under his watch. Even Obama didn't manage that. Plus, Trump focused on a lot of domestic threats, which neither Democrats nor Republicans do too much, for fear of offending some potential consitutent.

Now that China is objectively the world's rising superpower, while the US rots from the inside, the neo-cons are hoping to use China again as a scapegoat to rally the public around a common threat. Plus, I'm sure there's plenty of conservatives who, out of tradition, still kneejerk want to go to war with anyone. They were raised on movies showing the US going to war in Europe and Korea and Vietnam to fight the bad guys, and since everyone thinks they're the good guys, we have to act some foreign country.

But I agree with most of your summary. Whether or not you think China is a threat is irrelevant because the biggest problems in the US aren't external but our own moral and social corruption. China wasn't forcing Americans to set their own cities on fire last year. China isn't telling American kids to cut their dicks off or to not have families. We're doing that to ourselves, and berating anyone who suggests this might be a big problem.