They have won in all things non-military.
A war would probably solve a lot of our problems.
Military vs military, is still a laughable comparison.
In a full on conventional war China is only a strong contender for 2nd place.
i agree with this, and that would be counting "europe defense" as one thing.
biggest thing though, China has zero reason to come to mainland USA and the USA has zero reason to go to mainland china. non.
china and india had a minor shooting skirmish last year, nobody said anything outside of a NATO letter "please knock it off".
the cold war US/USSR had several hot conflicts that made big news but also made the threat of every local skirmish potentially turning in to the next cuba/vietnam/korea/panama. there was a weird power dynamic that saw the US in several short duration things during the 90's and then the war on terror perked everybody up that the USA was back on the war path, grand enemy be damned.
the war on terror hasn't ended, but the political and media posturing on it certainly has. over the past 10 years there has certainly been another bit of ramping up as everybody everywhere tests the limits of what is or is not tolerable. russia into georgia and ukraine, china into india, iran into syria, uzbeks and armenians. it's been interesting for sure.
with the amount of success that china has had with hong kong politically, i.e. laws and arrests and suppression, I think they will go that same route against Taiwan, see the "democracy" protests end of last year against the king, rather than a land assault. massive blustering and military "pressure" to keep the people aware and stay in the news though.
and china is making huge gains in africa/europe/asia east and west. they don't have a need in the slightest for a shooting war with the USA and the USA does not seemed postured to jump in to a defense of India/Pakistan (china is smart enough to wait in AFG until after we leave, but really, it cannot possibly be a priority for them regardless)
the USA certainly won't jump into africa's defense and we already agreed to go back to funding europes defense, not sure if or why china would seek to walk in to there.
strong military in the USA is certainly worthwhile and effective, but the idea of a ground war or even a proxy war with china seems pretty far out of the cards. I honestly believe china would not back kim in NK if he went off his rocker and assaulted the south or japan or hawaii or guam