China fought Vietnam after America. It didn’t go very well. It’s a defacto island with difficult terrain to the south, west, and north, while the first island c

China fought Vietnam after America. It didn’t go very well. It’s a defacto island with difficult terrain to the south, west, and north, while the first island chain keeps the lid in it. It hasn’t been until recently that it had a navy which could seriously reach beyond. It has been building everything it can and needs to break out of the first island chain by taking Taiwan and it knows that to do that it would first need a force capable of beating the Americans before doing anything.