Given the rhetoric flying around, China is using that ploy at least as much as anybody else.
The "who should play nice first" question is just another case of the prisoner's dilemma, no? And we're back at diplomacy as it's been played for longer than we care to document.
The US played nice with both China and Russia first, but both Putin and Xi are dedicated to destroying the current world order where conquering your neighbours isn’t allowed and democracies are favoured over dictatorships. At this point the options are basically to either tell the Neo-Hitlers that no they can’t have the Sudetenland now, or to fight World War 3 later.
