China's last real war was the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War. They don't really have any experience in modern wars. How will they perform when real bullets are flying? Will the internal corruption prove to make them ineffective as the Russian military? Remains to be seen.
Chinese manufacturing quality isn't great though. They make a lot of stuff incredibly cheap, but they don't hold up great in combat situations where they are exposed to mud, dirt, rain, get thrown around, etc.
But does US really have more technological sophistication and will it make a difference?
Some of the smartest people I've encountered in academia were Chinese. One Chinese guy was so smart that it left my professor (and me) puzzled about the speed at which he could absorb complicated concepts. I also see Chinese people and institutions on many research papers these days. Imho, it is foolish to rely on Western military supremacy, as if that were a thing.
> But does US really have more technological sophistication and will it make a difference?
The US dominates in one thing right now: computers, and software in particular. That includes AI's.
Whether that's enough to win a war is anybodies guess. It's like predicting the effect AI will have on the future of work. A few million slaughter bots that rest in the sun in the country side to recharge via their solar panels is a terrifying thought. For now it's science fiction, but if the USA found itself in a war long enough, it would become a reality. Musk's problems with the reliability of AI driven FSD would vanish, so possibly it's a reality coming sooner than you might think. But would any war China found itself in last that long, given their manufacturing capacity?
The First Opium War is the best example I could find: a small expeditionary force ran circles around a peer country's army for more than a year and crippled it thanks to total naval superiority and qualitatively better artillery and rifles.
The conquest of Aztecs is another example: Spain annihilated a country with twice the population. Though they cheated with bioweapons of course.
Most of the credit for the conquest of the Aztecs should be given to the hundreds of thousands of native soldiers fighting against the Aztecs, not "bioweapons" (which hurt both sides) or Spanish guns.
Well it's more complicated than that. Modern manufacturing of weapon systems is far more complex than in 1942. Combat boots sure. But switching shipbuilders from civilian to military is a far more complex ordeal nowadays. Survivability now means far more integrated systems.
China will win this anytime.