Probably costs half the F-22s price.
No, all China is interested in is the South China Sea, keep out of that and China will be content to just poke the US with espionage and trade wars.
However, the thing that a lot of people don't take into account with China is that it's a bit like an Armadillo. It's crunchy on the outside and smooth on the inside. It's weak point is the interior where the poor farmers and villagers live and work, so they often decide to send their sons and daughters to the cities on the coasts where the high tech manufacturing jobs are, so the PRC needs to accomodate housing for them and make jobs for them whilst trying to placate the interior so the interior doesn't rise up and overthrow them.
I've been playing the leader of the PRC on a forum based nationsim since August and I've done a fair bit of reading on Chinas economy and social situation and it's not as strong as many people think, however China puts on a good front which convinces the average person that it is all powerful. Yes, it is powerful, but at the same time it has several key vulnerabilities, and if the US were to put tariffs on imports from China it would bone Chinas economy quite nicely, and it would take them longer to recover than it would the US economy to recover if China dumped the excess dollars it has.
The way forward for the PRC is a gradual move towards internal production and self-sufficiency, allowing the Yuan to grow a little at a time so that it doesn't kill the export business and improving the social security so that the interior doesn't decide to rise up and start a second Chinese civil war.
It's tricky, and a tightrope but the options for the US are to either confront them and break them down, which will cost more in manpower and resources than the US would most likely be willing to invest unless they suffered a Pearl Harbour style blow at the beginning of it, or they focus on their own economy and try to work alongside the PRC...but I think we're pretty much engaged on track one now.
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