“ Their land-based stuff can hit pretty much anything made by man”
What makes you so sure ? They can’t even predict where their deorbited satellite will crash or make it descend in a controlled manner.
Once upon a time the Russians used to be an invincible superpower until they invaded a little country supplied with western weapons. Then they faced humiliation. Everything we know about Chinese capabilities is through propaganda videos and intelligence sources. We have never seen anything in actual combat.
Yes. For some reason we haven't seen China's nuclear missiles used in actual combat. What are they hiding?
Seriously: war is the only true test of a country's warfighting capability. The cost of testing a peer enemy in the crucible of actual war is very high.
So we use models, wargames, exercises to establish what facts we can, relatively cheaply. We watch proxy wars very carefully. And when proxy wars break out (that's about the most neutral way I can put it) we feed weapon systems into them.
Proxy wars are serious conflicts with deadly stakes, but at a distance. We don't get shelled, Donekst does.
Proxy wars are also laboratories of war: where we can test an opponent while the costs and risks are carried by someone else.
For instance we have been able to test Russia's warfighting capability at a safe remove: using Ukraine as the proxy.
Russia (it turns out) has a build strategy based on aerial denial, massive application of artillery and old-school industrial warfare. Their conventional global reach is minimal. No-one is impressed by their surface navy. But their ability to wage large-scale land war on their own border, and to stare NATO down while doing it - that is beyond doubt.
We have also been able to test Russia's economic resilience with sanctions and confiscation. Europe was the proxy in this case, and ... yikes. It's going to be a cold winter for them.