Thee RANT

China’s most likely approach in my opinion is to beat us to death in an economic war,

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 The great divide/defensive wall for us is the Pacific and and the resultant space  (above & below) between us!

Before WWII, Japan by conquest, had to seek out materials for supporting their population and making war that they did not have..That required lots of vessels for shipping and turned out to be their Achilles heel!
China is in that same position...You need  shipping  and a big Navy with support bases to protect the fruits of conquest, something that they are a long way from achieving or ever will!

In WWII, carriers were handicapped by the range of their aircraft to about 400 miles round trip (RT) from a picked battle site...Today without air tankers, it's about 3000 miles RT for carrier launched planes to the chosen point of engagement!
These US Navy planes can strike targets from 100 miles out....quite a defensive distance for detection of incoming counter offensive  weapons from above or below..i.e., if the area of a US group of attacking ships is known..

Pacific is a big place..!

the most feared weapon at sea is a well trained submarine. they are the snipers of the sea. as for a carriers defense, it is extensive and more so with her escorting DDG's and CG's. Even with all that they can be overwhelmed, so the idea is to target the other guys missile systems first. the unmanned assets are rapidly growing in numbers and complexity. communications will be a problem. sats shot up, blinded, killed. so rapid replacement by Musk, Bezos's and one or two others space programs is imperative. 
any war with chy-na would ultimately be fighting over land. island hopping one again. if chy-na moves so will the NorK's. It is a complicated scenario with other state actors involved, Iran, Pakistan, India, Vietnam Taiwan and Israel. you hope it never happens, but big balls of chy-na will eventually want to hit something.