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So... quite honestly this is probably a translation issue and cultural differences.

In China, throughout Chinese history, if a local government body /openly defies/ a greater authority, to the point of defying direct orders regarding the deployment of highly armed and combat capable forces... and you now have a scenario where armed forces loyal to the local government are literally right next to armed forces of the greater authority... and both official governments are claiming they have the right to do what they are doing, and the other does not...

This is functionally nearly always a situation that ends up spiralling into war, and basically the inherent assumption is that the local government should be subservient to the greater government, and they should know that what they are doing is likely to lead to armed conflict, it is likely to escalate, thus functionally when you add together the assumption that the local government should submit and is not, and the proximity of opposed armed agents of the state on both sides... basically this would be viewed as Texas declaring war on the Federal government.

We interpret the situation as, well, Texas didnt declare war because they cant actually do that legally!

In so doing we kind of forget that /thats not how civil conflicts fucking work/.

Basically put another way, if an armed conflict does start here, and then it broadens, and then 10 years later youre reading about it in a history text book...

Is the term civil war going to be used?

Or will we all agree to call it the special military and police action to quell an illegal use of force by rogue and criminal elements within the united states government?

Which of those do you think is going to more easily translate to Mandarin and Cantonese and what not?

EDIT: I am /far, faaaar/ from a fan of the current Chinese government for a great many reasons.

But, it can always be a useful exercise to read how other country's media outlets report on your own country's domestic affairs.

Is there outright propaganda and lies in some instances? Absolutely.

Is that happening in this case?

In my opinion, not really, no.

I personally, as an American living here my whole life, would basically agree that at the very least, what Texas is doing is done with the implied threat of, and known public support for /functionally/ starting what /basically/ amounts to a civil war, by engaging in escalating brinksmanship, seeking other allies (whats it 25 states now are waiting for Abbot to ask them to send their NatGuard to Texas), and both sides are moving combat capable chess pieces on the board in highly public ways.

Sure its not technically a declaration of war or secession, but uh, thats because /technically/ those things are impossible, even though they realistically are not.

My only possible actual quibble here would basically be that eh probably most Americans wouldn't view it as a war or secession attempt until shooting starts and a formal declaration of 'we are forming confederacy 2, this time so we can shot hispanic migrants and form a theocracy instead of uphold slavery of blacks'.

Which... again. A declaration is about /intent/, not necessarily precisely timed with action toward that intent.

Basically, at best, this is a nearly totally unprecedented situation in US History, basically totally unprecedented in a century.

Most Americans suffer from massive latent, unconscious American Exceptionalism across the political spectrum, assuming kinds of status quo type norms that simply are not actually evidenced by both history in general of societies around the world, as well as literally our own.

There are of course many issues where I think generally, the modern culture of China suffers from its own kinds of blinders... but not on this kind of an issue.

Even in this thread we have a comment of basically "yeah right, they wouldnt win in the long run" which both denies the proximal possibility of a civil conflict, but also admits that it could happen, but that itd be /dumb/ if it happened.

As if wars have never been fought for reasons one or even both sides think are dumb, or wars have never been fought when it seems very likely one side would lose.

Remember when nearly everyone thought Russia would never invade Ukraine because it would be dumb, and then he did, and then nearly everyone thought Ukraine would basically be steamrolled, and it wasn't?