Okay. 10 years. 20? How much time needs to pass before you admit when you’re wrong?
While they been talking about it for a long time, true, what’s change is that in recent times they’ve been building up their military forces a lot, and doing very political/military moves in the waters between them. They’re definitely ramping up on their actions and/or responses, signaling, probing. And this is new.
How far that escalation goes, nobody knows, but usually if somebody says they’re going to do something, you should take them at their word that they’re going to do what they said they were going to do, at some point in time.