The US would loose a war against China simply because China can outproduce the US many times over. I have no idea why the US keeps teasing a war with China, a war they would most certainly loose. What is the point?
At the same time China continues to stockpile commodities[1] and holds an overwhelming advantage in ship building production capacity over the US[2].
America may currently have an advantage in power projection over China, but they lack the industrial base to sustain any sort of attack as their ship building and missile building capacity is completely atrophied. China just needs to hold the line in the first conflict with the US and then they can quickly rebuild what they lost and launch barrages of drones at Taiwan.
As for how China can disrupt American industrial capacity? At first it will probably be a combination of unorthodox techniques including cyberattacks, agit-prop disruption techniques with social media, 5th column disruption like what we're seeing in Russia, and perhaps more exotic things like autonomous submarines that launch drones to attack infrastructure near the coast, or perhaps more of those balloons that they were using for surveillance but instead of surveillance equipment they'll contain drone swarms to be released over vital infrastructure or tinderbox forests.
It is unlikely that America will risk sending any B-52s over China and it's also unlikely that F-35s will pose any long term risk to Chinese industrial capacity given the brittle F-35 supply chain.
A war with China will be about whoever can produce more cheap weapons faster while deploying them in unexpected ways and China without a doubt wins that race.
[0] https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites...
[1] https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/07/23/w...
[2] https://www.csis.org/analysis/china-dominates-shipbuilding-i...
B2 stealth will not serve you in the middle of a sensor (radar) network. And taking it out with radiation seeking missiles may not be a reliable counter. They almost certainly have a network of passive radars and disposable emitters.
Also, Aircraft carriers are vulnerable to mass missile attacks, and land bases in the Philippines, Japan or Taiwan are within missile range.
As much as nuclear powers want you to think they will use them if you resist their goals, nukes only come into play when state survival is at risk, not when belligerents pursue limited goals. The US will never pursue the defeat of China. They will manage escalation. They will pursue the limited goals of status quo maintenance and a quick resolution, which can include bombing industrial production nodes to signal that China will lose a war of attrition, forcing it to call off an attack on Taiwan.
The original post was postulating that American bombers and intelligence could destroy China's production base. If US attacks did destroy a significant portion of China's factories, and production facilities, I have no doubt the war would become nuclear.
Any US attack on China's industrial base would have similar signalling to control escalation risk. It would probably be limited to key nodes in the missile or drone supply chain rather than attacking the entire base. China likely wouldn't use nukes because they are also worried about the same escalation risks as the US. They will know the US is pursuing limited objectives. The US will probably tell them this through a deconfliction line, as well as publicly. If China does use nukes, it'll likely be limited with the goal of escalating to deescalate.
None of these decisions are easy and I agree there are significant risks. But I wouldn't rule it out, especially if the alternative is to lose a war of attrition and have your influence rolled back.
An effective conventional strike against military targets on the mainland would be met with China's best conventional response.
Jumping to nuclear threats or use of a nuclear weapon shows weakness and terrible escalation management. Two traits china doesn't exhibit.
I think all this talk of who would win often ignores that factor to. There is no realistic total war scenario between China and the US - China doesn't have any desire or capacity to role tanks into Washington and the US doesn't have any desire to role tanks into Beijing.
The war, if it comes will be China trying to take control of Taiwan and the US intervening on the side of Taiwan. Victory for China looks like Taiwan under PRC rule, victory for the US looks like Taiwanese independence.
With that in mind "all" the US needs to be able to do is make the cost of the invasion/maintaining the supply lines too high. If I was China the drones I might worry about the most would be underwater!