The other thing is that China is unlike any other peer oponent the US has geared up to fight. They aren't only high-tech, they are also assymetrical. If the US

The other thing is that China is unlike any other peer oponent the US has geared up to fight. They aren't only high-tech, they are also assymetrical. If the US builds another massive carrier strike group, the Chinese will build two hundred antiship hypersonic missiles (whether ballistic or otherwise). If the US builds 100 bombers to deliver a thousand stealthy cruise missiles, the Chinese will use their satellites to detect them taking off and retreat their ships to within range of mainland air defences and integrate the ships air defences to form an air defence system far surpassing anything else outside of Russian (the Chinese use basically the same air defence systems on their ships and on land). Good luck overwhelming the equivalent of 50 air defences brigades all working together. The US spends a hundred billion dollars on super stealthy submarines? No problem, build ten times as many small drone submarines and put high powered sonars at the bottom of the sea beyond the reach of any torpedoes and use active sonar as much as you want without risking any sailor or high value equipment, then keep your ships behind this perimeter. If the US is going to fly advanced stealth fighters, you don't meet them with your own plane for plane, you build super long range missiles and high altitude stealth interceptors to lob them at support aircraft before they can be detected, then bomb the shit out of wherever they took off from before they can re-arm, while blunting the first strike with an air defence system they'll take days to disable. Because China is only going to fight in its backyard it doesn't have to fight ship for ship and plane for plane like the Soviets or the Germans. It wants to bring the US to fight it in the worst possible place and then beat it assymetrically using every conceivable advantage.