Unlikely. China has no experience and insufficient infrastructure to project power over an ocean to take and hold land against the US Navy; logistics would get

Unlikely. China has no experience and insufficient infrastructure to project power over an ocean to take and hold land against the US Navy; logistics would get difficult once the US Air Force and Marines enter the picture, as well. Also, they currently enjoy a highly-advantageous position by keeping their relationship with the US somewhat ambiguous, by turns friendly and icy. This strongly advances their mercantilist posture, while giving them cover to engage in low-intensity conflict (like the South China Sea islands activity) with impunity. If they openly turned hostile against the US like that, then their economy would have to do without much export trade in a short amount of time, months instead of decades. Doable, but a mess, and it's not clear that the initial domestic support the current regime would enjoy from a war would outweigh and outlast the longer term economic adjustments to be made. They're trying to pivot away from exports at the moment, but it's pretty addictive. I tend to buy more into arguments that the PRC enjoys the cognitive/attention bandwidth NK occupies within US leadership, and if NK happens to first strike US, successfully or not, the resulting chaos would net benefit the PRC's global power position. They keep the benefit of a buffer state by insisting the US not take pre-emptive action, while simultaneously refusing to take stronger action (using the avoidance of absorbing a NK humanitarian crisis as shield) against NK, yet not actively help NK beyond the current nominal assistance levels, so I don't see significant downsides for the PRC and RUS to let the status quo reign. I suspect the PRC's unofficial statement that if NK struck first, then the PRC would not oppose a US reaction, is a thinly-veiled threat to the US: even if you or an ally absorb a nuclear first strike, you're not going to replace our buffer state. We'll intervene to topple the Kim regime, perhaps even help you do that, and then we'll ensure we control the agenda going forward of what emerges to replace that regime in NK. Before we get all doom and gloom over ICBMs, the chances are greater NK will ship a nuclear bomb to the US inside an ISO shipping container crossing in by ship, train or truck than lobbing it with a missile. The difficulties from this point in their ICBM development program are still substantial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A00QWVHem3A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A00QWVHem3A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elEh4EBrqTQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elEh4EBrqTQ I agree with other comments here that the bigger, long-term threat is nuclear proliferation. We might successfully enter a MAD scenario with NK, only to get clocked by a Hezbollah-assembled device painstakingly purchased and gleaned from multiple sources including NK among the list. It's not even the materiel or finished devices that has me wondering as much as the practical knowledge that sits in scientists', engineers' and technicians' heads. We could magic away all of NK's nuclear infrastructure, and that still won't solve the problem of they have all these people that know the how-to's of building the devices. That's going to be a tough problem to solve.