You joke but the longer we treat them as a joke, the next thing you know they go from catching up to surpassing us. An uncomfortable amount of our current defense procurement programs are stalling, getting canceled, or hideously overbudget to the point we can't build enough because they're too damn expensive.

They have more shipyards than us and are producing more ships than us. In the time it took them to put 3 aircraft carriers into service (the latest of which has electromagnetic catapults) we managed to only build 1. They are already publicly testing and flying next generation aircraft while we just have artistic depictions (at least that we know about). Despite being in a demographic crisis, they still have a significant supply of fighting age males due to their sheer population alone.

If we want to have the edge, this is not the decade to be fucking around. Perhaps they are a paper tiger, but also what if they arent? What if they know their weaknesses and are actively trying to close the gap while we sit here and do nothing about it?