It's going to be dicey...and if we are going to get past it, we need to take the economic battle back to them starting right now, IMHO, and bite the bullet and treat them like Reagan did the Soviets in the 80's. Just my own take on the matter.
"remember as well that a significant portion of western outlays goes towards relatively high salaries, benefits, and health care costs that the Chinese system is not burdened with. In terms of outlays towards pure military weapons systems directly, the Chinese are rapidly catching up with western numbers."
Few people realize that. A LOT of our military spending is retirement and health benefits for veterans. And most of our federal budget is entitlements for the elderly.
The Chinese aren't democratic so they have at best meager benefits for their old.. and those aren't rising even as China grows. They also have an endless peasantry to draw soldiers from.
Therefore the only rational way to compare the two militaries is looking at numbers and quality of equipment, port facilities, those kind of numbers.
I mean if we look at pure budgets, France would be ranked as one of the greatest militaries on earth.