However, only STUPID people take on the US Navy in blue water. It would be a short, but exciting engagement for them:)
Nobody is stupid enough to engage us in the open when our military power is the only real advantage that we have left as a nation. I think the point is to make the cost of US intervention so high that we would think twice before trying to cut off their Indian ocean supply lines.
This could also serve to goad the US in a costly arms race that would further bankrupt us. The Chinese economy is based on the production of real goods, while our economy is revolving into a series of currency manipulation schemes backed by our global military presence. So while China needs only military deterrence to keep their economy going. We need absolute military dominance to prevent our economy from collapsing.
Of course this is what happens to any empire in decline. Our own Internal corruption and decay is doing most of the work for the Chinese.
Isn't that a quote from a former CNO? Admiral Crowe, was it? Who said that in the event of hostilities the career of the Red Navy would be "exciting, colorful, and short."
What bothers me has been noted above: that we tend to say stuff like that from time to time -- one of the last times being right before Sputnik went up, and before that, about 18 months before Pearl Harbor.
Classic quote from the Pearl Harbor era came from Adm. Walter Pye, commander of the Battle Force Pacific, during a conference in his quarters aboard USS California on December 6, 1941. CDR Edwin Layton, CINCPAC intelligence officer, went to visit Pye with latest estimates and misgivings and raised the specter of imminent war (the Japanese were already known to be sailing for Malaya, and Layton couldn't find Adm. Yamamoto's aircraft carriers). Pye's opinion was that the Japanese would never attack US interests, since "we're too powerful". We were all that -- and Pye's flagship was sitting on the bottom less than 24 hours later.