Oh you can lay waste to the place, true.
It's a quote from somewhere and I'll butcher it but I can't remember where but it went something like this.
Quote:
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If someone invades china on the first day, they'll take 50,000 prisoners, on the second day they'll take 100,000 prisoners, on the third day they'll take 200,000 prisoners and on the fourth day we'll win.
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If you did it you'd end up with a death toll, no doubt with a fair size percentage of civvies in the hundreds of thousands or millions. That's going to make any democratic government queasy.
Other factor: China has nukes, lots of them, Missile Defence Shielf is cute but it's never going to work in the event of a barrage of a few hundred warheads.