That, at least, is the thesis of The Coming War on China, the latest polemic from the award-winning documentary-maker John Pilger.

The military build-up in the region "is now a flashpoint for a war between China and America," 77-year-old Pilger says in the film. "The United States and China may well be on a path to war, and nuclear war is no longer unthinkable."

That China is building military bases on reclaimed reefs and disputed islands in the region has "rightly" been big news in the Western media. But, he adds, "What is not news is that China itself is under threat. The aim of this film is to break a silence."

It's dramatic stuff. But is he perhaps over-emphasising the American risk and downplaying the significance of the Chinese build-up in order to make his point?

No, he insists. "The point I make in the film is that one-sided news suppresses the degree of danger we face," he says. "The fact that China itself is surrounded by US bases, with American ships, missiles and bombers on its doorstep, has been virtually ignored. Once you fill in the whole picture, the pattern is clear. With every American move in the region, China reacts."

Citing David Vine's 2015 book Base Nation, Pilger claims the US has 4000 military bases on its own territory and almost 1000 more scattered across the globe. Of these, some 450 are in the South Pacific, and collectively they "form a giant noose encircling China with missiles, bombers, warships".

Traditionally, Pilger's talking heads say, China has not been expansionist (though the citizens of Tibet might disagree). Only last year did it announce plans for its first ever military base on foreign soil, in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa (the reef bases are in disputed territory, to which China argues it has claims).

Pilger's argument, supported by the talking heads he interviews, is that China's current military expansion should primarily be understood as a defensive response rather than an aggressive one.

"This is not to say that in a region now echoing with Trump-like threats, it won't change," he says. "One strategist in China said to me, 'We have no wish to be America's enemy, but if that is how we are perceived, we have to prepare'.

"And there is no doubt they are preparing. Recently, a senior Chinese military officer said that since Trump came to power, war was 'no longer a slogan' and was becoming 'a practical reality'."

That, says Pilger, is why he spends so much of his near-two-hour film recounting the history of nuclear testing in the South Pacific. If there is a war, the use of nuclear weapons is a genuine possibility, and we need to be reminded of how devastating that would be – the immediate death toll, the nuclear winter that would soon follow, the deaths by starvation in its wake and, for those who might survive, the cancers and other illnesses.

The great lunacy of all this, he argues, is that the brinkmanship is driven not by America's defensive needs but by the hunt for profits.

"As the US has declined as a manufacturing country, its war industries have prospered," he says. "The military-industrial-complex in the US is so ubiquitous politically that it has been called the one true power in America."

The Coming War on China is on limited release. John Pilger will do a Q&A after screenings at Cinema Nova, Melbourne on Friday February 10, Dendy Newtown, Sydney on Thursday February 16, Dendy Canberra on Thursday February 23, Cremorne Sydney on Wednesday March 1 and Raffertys Theatre Parramatta on Monday March 6. Details: www.thecomingwarmovie.com 

Karl Quinn is on facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on twitter @karlkwin