War with China

By "War with China" I assume that the poster means
US war with China where Aus Armed Forces would be
automatically co-opted by the yanks or like Vietnam, being allocated a
minor role with limited automy under a US Battle/War plan

Good generals will firstly:
(a) do an audit of his own forces strengths, weaknesses and capabilities
(b) do ditto of the enemy
(c) given the overall war objectives, the generall will then devise
an overall war plan with ongoing objectives and strategies to acheve
them in a timely manner.

Our armed forces do not have those capabilities if confronting China in war
(we would be like PNG confronting Aus in war) so the best that we could hope for
is doing a Vietnam/M-E role in any US/China war.

This is why there has been a change of Subs plan: the Froggy jobs were
not compatible with the US attack Sub fleet and the US simply wants the Aus Taxpayer
to stump-up for Nuke Subs that will be effectively under US C&C.

The US has accrued a mountain of debt ($31 Trillion) of which $1 Trillion /P/A is on
armed forces/ CIA and now it is calling on Allies like Aus to pony-up. Its also doing ditto with NATO member states.

So IMO the US war plan with China is:
-Illicit the assistance of NATO member countries, Aus, Japan, S/Korea etc and fight a war
against China on anyone's territory except the US homeland and as such remain the Global Hegemon
which enables it to skim world trade via the Greenback's reserve currency status/Petro Dollar
and of course maintain the global dominance of US Multinationals.

When the US was confronted with the rise of Japan economically (it was snookered militarily)
the Jap solution was to relocate some of its major manufacturing and technology (eg: Toyota-Lexus, Honda etc)
to the USA thereby not draining the USA of its import dollars.

Ironically, current US policy is against the Chinese buying or setting up US based manufacturing
and the unwanted side effect economically is that China has now over $3.5 Trillion of US Reserves
and growing this at the rate of half a Trillion a year. Mind you China is using this Half a Trillion
a year trade surplus to finance its external BRI projects none of which are in the USA
(or Aus for that matter)

Likely outcome:

The US will ratchet up its economic sanctions on China (mostly at its NATO members, Aus & Jap expense)
in the hope that China, like the USSR will economically implode, because a kinetic war would be MAD.
That siad, Xi and his inner sanctum are specialists in the economic demise & split up of the USSRand the big question
is if the US declares an all out economic war on China will it be China or the USA who will buckle firsy?

That, IMO, is the 21stC question?