The good thing about China is that the US is having all these disagreements strictly through trade. These are the two most important economies in the world and they are intertwined in extremely complicated ways. There are simply too many people who would lose too much money to see millions of Chinese die in a war with America.

The only way war with China happens in anything close to the near term is if China attempts to take Taiwan and then China retaliates against US assistance to Taiwan. And the world would absolutely be forced to intervene because Japan would have no choice but to intervene on Taiwan’s behalf.

Even this would just be a proxy war, though, fought on Taiwan. People forget Japan’s interest in such a conflict but China does not. Once they get Hong Kong under their boot, it’s possible China may begin to turn their attention toward Taiwan. Their invasion would have to be insanely fast and overpowering, however, which would be nearly impossible given the western mountain region that is more impenetrable than Afghanistan and the fact that every single man, woman, and child in Taiwan is 100% prepared for invasion and regularly participates in invasion drills.

And the US and South Korea would likely make it a two front war by bombing every single North Korean to death.