Maybe. But a proxy war and nuclear exchange right next to China itself it a pretty risky strategy.
Red China's PLA is demonstrably neither timid or risk-adverse. They have hosted Osama Bin Laden on their territory three times before 9-11, and shipped massive quantities of armaments to the Taliban...even after 9-11.
The Communist leadership, right under our noses the last decade, has deployed truly serious civil defense infrastructure and it needs to be pointed out, that unlike the mainland U.S. which is only studying the issue of total coverage of short range attacks, China has a missile defense. The SAM-300-PMU's they bought from Russia (which has 8,800 of them deployed around its periphery) are serious anti-missile interceptors.