There is a very simple conversion that any home chef can apply to any recipe: add 1.5 full heads for every 2 cloves mentioned in the recipe

"fucking around in the South China" = sailing in international waters as defined by the UNCLOS, to which China is a signatory

"US keeps trying to use the Taiwan situation as a wedge issue" = maintaining the status quo in the face of repeated, overt invasion threats

"desperately want a proxy war" = can't allow an oligo-fascist state to seize control of the single-path source of chips that enable modern life

"no western news coverage of this" = I don't look at the news