Look at it this way...
The US is both a continental and a maritime power. Currently, China is only a continental power. That said, in a possible US-China conflict, the US will be the expeditionary force and will face China purely as a maritime power, while China, despite her navy's modernization, will be fighting purely as a continental power.
Important major characteristics of a maritime power are mobility and speed. Am not talking about moving ships at speed comparable to land vehicles but about the ability and capability of a fleet to make highly independent decisions to relocate and change tactics as situations demands and allows. Land bases cannot make such decisions. In many ways, at sea, a fleet commander is a demi-god unto himself. In any war, there is the major, or grand, strategy, which is about the purpose of and reason for the war, then there is the minor strategy, which is about nitty gritty details of the how to wage a war. At sea, a fleet commander have the latitude of the minor strategy in ways and degrees a land army commander does not have. For example, operationally speaking, the admiral does not have to worry about hills or cities that may be in his path of travel.
What this means is that China will be fighting primarily defensively -- as in mostly being reactive to US threats, real or imagined, off the Chinese mainland coast. If the war is real, by the time the American carrier fleets (plural) arrives in Asia, the Chinese submarine fleet will either be removed from the board or seriously debilitated by US sub, leaving the USN to worry only about threats coming from above, not below. Also by that time, the PLA will understand that if the PLAN cannot rely on its subs, the PLAN is effectively quartered, leaving the PLAAF as the country's sole defender.
There will be at least two US carrier fleets off China's coast. My guess is that there will be a third in reserve outside the Taiwan-Japan line.
If this map is reasonably accurate...
http://www.ausairpower.net/XIMG/PLAAF-Military-Regions-DOD.png
It means the USN and USAF can coordinate their forces to seriously hamper the PLAAF's ability to wage any air campaign by taking one or two bases at any time. Someone is going to chime in with the DF-21D but until there is an open water test of the weapon, we can remove it as a serious threat to the American carrier fleets. Ironically, for all the talk about fighting the US with 'asymmetric warfare', it will be the US who will fight China in true asymmetric fashion.
A PLAAF air base can expect to be hit by a combination of high altitude B-2 and low altitude B-1 assaults. It does not take much to remove an aircraft from combat. Believe it or not, one hand grenade can render an aircraft impotent for at least 24 hrs, if not several days. But now we are talking about a scatter of dozens of 110kg small diameter bombs (SDB) over the flightline in the middle of the night.
No one is talking about the US 'invading' mainland China. Fighting as purely a maritime power, the USN will not have the ability to land on China. But if containment/restriction can be construed as a defeat, then the US can militarily defeat China.
