>From where I'm sitting, at this moment, this all seems like an elaborate disinformation campaign to both prop up morale of the domestic masses believing the USA has magic China doesn't, while trying to instill FUD in the enemy.
Maybe... I could actually buy that the military has some kind of top secret fusion technology, but this being a disinformation campaign doesn't make a lot of sense. This story doesn't really prop up domestic morale - the masses for the most part don't know about this, nor do they care (that notwithstanding the fraction who already believe the Area 51/UFO stuff anyway.) And I would expect China or any modern country to be capable of differentiating between a description of legitimate science and magical woo-woo nonsense.
My personal take on this is that there is legitimate, purely terrestrial but advanced technology at work here, but still nothing involving anti-gravity or anything ridiculous like that. I'm assuming people's pop-cultural bias towards UFO conspiracy theories are causing people to jump the gun.
But even then it's weird. It's weird any way you look at it, unless the whole thing is a hoax from top to bottom.