The last time China bombed a foreign country openly and it made the news. I assure you, China has bombed foreign countries within the last two years, they just prefer funding small scale terrorists rather than open displays of power. This is not better.
Wouldn't catch the USA fighting a proxy war. /s
Ya, this is in fact quantifiably better. Insofar as number of deaths = level of badness.
Neither is a picnic but I'll take a small proxy conflict over massive direct air campaign and definitely boots-on-the-ground Freedom campaigns any day.