If China wants to improve relations here it can pretty much agree to dismantle it's offensive military forces, as it's not involved in any kind of peacekeeping operations on the level that requires them. Things like aircraft carriers, fighter bombers, and attack submarines are not defensive weapons, especially when combined with China's human rights record which makes the odds of them being taken seriously as peacekeepers unlikely for the moment, and the build up of it's conventional military combined with internal saber rattling about wanting to colonize other countries, something which might be taken with a grain of salt if it wasn't for the fact that China seems eager to cut back on it's internal population control methods, when it already can't take care of the people it has.
Then of course we have to look at China's economic policies where it refuses to acknowledge international patents, copyrights, and IP laws and encourages a lot of nations to do the same. A lot of people like to point fingers at our debts to China, but at the same time they overlook how much money China arguably owes the US and other Western powers as the result of it's "robber economy". One potential economic cause of World War III above and beyond anything else has always been the hypothetical possibility of China calling in it's debt, at which point the western powers will take China's own economic crimes more seriously. China for example arguably owes the US two or three times what we've borrowed from it in lost trade revenues from knockoffs. Viagra knockoffs alone represent literally trillions of dollars in lost revenue to Pfizers which in turn amounts to lost monies to the US and France, especially when looking at sales to the global marketplace.
As China's military has been built up, it's also become increasingly aggressive. Right now "Battlefield 4" is well timed with any anti-Chinese messages given that China has been basically trying to take over Japanese territory now that it has a military force capable of aggression. True, Japan seized the area from China, who in turn had seized it from others during it's own myriad regional wars (China is made up of what was once a lot of different countries). Pretty much every bit of land on the planet was taken away from someone else at one point. In this case however Japan is basically a puppet of the USA, we keep the country under occupation and use it as the base for huge amounts of our own military forces, it's our major foothold into Asia. Despite the SSDF which we let Japan have for diplomatic reasons, the USA could pretty much wipe out every Japanese person in Japan inside of about 20 minutes if it wanted to, that's how much firepower we keep based there. Japan's holdings represent huge strategic value to the US in potentially keeping China and Russia and any plans for invasions from their end in line. Likewise the islands China wants at the moment would represent a huge threat to the US navy if China was to say build bases there or use it to base fleets. This kind of positioning becoming an issue kind of plays havoc with China claiming to be friendly and whining about how they are being portrayed in the media (ultimately trying to play one kind of media against another). This hasn't been issue for decades and now that China has been building offensive military forces, it's suddenly become an issue... uh huh. The "friendly" Chinese have also been out there playing chicken with US ships recently, and honestly it's shown an incredible about of restraint that we haven't started sinking Chinese vessels in these incidents.
Basically when China started acting like the "Evil Empire" and actually putting Russia to shame in some regards, they started getting the same kind of press in fiction.
I'll also point out that one of the big reasons why scenarios like "Red Dawn" are such jokes, whether it's Russia, North Korea, or China (which was replaced by North Korea by political reasons in the remake), is because of the huge amount of forces we maintain in Japan, as well as the US navy controlling tons of little islands and bases all through both oceans, especially in the pacific theater. As long as we aren't dumb about it any force from that area of the world is going to have to first fight our military pretty much on their doorstep, and then pretty much fight for every inch of territory to pretty much get across the world. Just getting a force to the US in any shape to do anything is not going to be easy. Of course a lot of this is dependent on maintaining our control of that territory and infrastructure, if we start surrendering key elements of it like Japanese territory and the like, we actually open up some of these "ridiculous" scenarios. Right now the more buffer space we have from "our" territory between us and Chinese territory is good. Right now I think we've been a too short sighted in peacetime in a lot of our dealings when it comes to our naval control, but that gets into things well beyond the scope of my points here.
At any rate, if China wants to be treated better in fiction, maybe it should start acting better. You know, actually apologize for the recent incidents around Japan, and remove it's naval forces from the region entirely for one. But that won't happen, and well... expect to see more of this.
