America has misjudged China horribly before. Hyperpower hubris turned the Korean War into a direct conflict between US and Chinese troops.
Then-president Harry Truman thought he had free licence to hurl parts of the US Eighth Army across the 38th parallel in October 1950 and roll back the whole of communist North Korea. Advisers assured him that the infant regime of Mao Zedong was too weak to intervene, and too ill-equipped to make much difference if it dared. It was the worst failure of US strategic analysis in modern times.
