The problem is that Chinese are very patriotic so they will do whatever the govt tells them to do in a war. They have the second best propaganda machine (North Korea tops them in that department) and teh worlds largest army.
I thing the Chinese people would support the govt action to go to war overseas. They learnt a lot from their defeat in Vietnam in the late 1970s, when they lost many hundred thousand troops by what they assumed were a vassal state. That loss made Deng determined to get the best of western technology and thus he allowed in foreign companies.
I do not think the young Chinese, including the urban population, would have any hesitation in fighting for an overseas empire. The loss of life would not necessarily be that great and in the scheme of things they would easily get over thisn. They would simply modify the one child policy briefly to take care of that and to do elsewhere what they are doing in re-populating Tibet.
The only thing they respect is power and the exercise of power. John Howard acted very much as their lackey and Labor has been very pro China for decades (Keating and Hawke both work as lobbyists for them and probably many others) So I suspect there is some surprise by the Chinese about what KRudd is supposedly intending to do on the defence front.
Basically we need nuclear weapons, and then there would not be any stuffing around with us. China has accommodated India since it acquired such weapons (went to war with them briefly before then over Nepal I think).
