Just posing a thought for consideration, is a blue water navy really essential for China now as it has been for the US?
The trade routes within the island chain outboard of China can be controlled by relatively short range land based missiles never having to put a fleet or aircraft carrier in harms way. The Chicom trade fleet could be obliterated in that way just as submarines did the same to the Japanese trade fleet.
The Chicoms can project outward of their bathtub in a similar way but only so far as the outer islands from Japan all the way to Indonesia. Some land bases may be needed to expand but Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia are land battles, not easy but require no navy.
There is no need to project into the vastness of the Pacific, it is only water after all, nothing to take. What they need and want are resources; those are available without spanning the Pacific.
It is even much easier to go to war to the west, with the Stans and Russia than it is to go east.
As for taking or conquering the US, why?
If you believe the common wisdom on FR, the most vaxxed group in the world, aka the US Military, will be reduced to a shell force by disease, debilitation, and death.
So the ChiComs can just roll up to the US Capitol and ask for the keys....