the main reason I bothered to mention France and Poland is this: France utterly failed Poland when it came to delivering useful weapons in a timely manner when Poland clearly needed them. maybe Australia decided that it didn't want to be put in that situation. it's not a unique scenario.
any nation that grows in status, power, and ambition will present itself as a potential threat to its neighbors. if a culture becomes sufficiently powerful enough in economic and military terms... they become a global level threat. that's generally how I look at things.
or, to put it another way, power and wealth lose none of their corrupting power simply because it changes hands from one person/nation-state to another. even Friedrich Engels pointed that out in "On Authority". we can use a different name for the thing... but the nature of the thing does not change. the corrupting nature of ambition and power doesn't disappear when that ambition and power changes hands; or manifests itself in a new time and place.
I believe that underestimating the threat that China presents to the world is a mistake. I'm not saying that people should panic. I'm not saying that full-scale war is a foregone conclusion. it's just that your complete dismissal of other people's fears concerning China as nothing more than white existential fear is to seriously undersell the scale and nature of the risk. especially since I pointed out to Chinese invasions that were directed to nations that are predominantly non-white. let's quote you, for good measure:
so, to be clear, your argument is that since China didn't capture and hold any territory with these numerous border skirmishes that they started... that means that they're not a threat? the fact that they've initiated numerous small-scale invasions of other countries but didn't occupy any territory is now proof that China is harmless?
it's not uncommon for nations to do trial balloon military actions as preparation for more ambitious, larger, and riskier actions later. Japan did this repeatedly throughout the 20th Century.
typically nations invade other nations with the intention of capturing territory and holding on to it. since China decided in 1978 that it wasn't worth continued fighting and a negative international response, somehow it means that the invasion attempt towards Vietnam never happened? why did China INVADE Vietnam if they had no intention of occupying that territory?
I thought you might counter with "to punish Vietnam for their occupation of Cambodia..." but, since you didn't do that, perhaps Chinese territorial ambitions were so brazen in this scenario even that excuse would seem totally unconvincing.
here's a map summarizing the Chinese invasion of northern Vietnam. even the lowest estimates place the Chinese 'expeditionary force' as having at least 200,000 soldiers and several hundred tanks. but none of that matters because they didn't occupy any territory and the borders never officially changed!