China can almost certainly win a naval war with the US already; or rather, negate the US's naval force projection tool of choice, the aircraft carrier, with anti-ship ballistic missiles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-26 - range of 2500 miles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-26 - range of 2500 miles
The Exocet was made way back in the early 70's yet carriers and surface fleets in general still aren't obsolete.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4810853/china-railgun-warship-wea...
https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/3/22/i...
https://news.usni.org/2019/03/05/report-u-s-carriers-need-ne...
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-apparently-gets-its-a...
Of course a lot of this is self-serving stuff designed to drum up more money to spend, but defence against missiles is fundamentally asymmetric. The defender need to get lucky every time, while the attacker only needs to be lucky once or twice. And MIRV is a big multiplier in favour of the attacker.
Carriers are great against countries or factions without anti-ship missile capability.
If you use a nuclear warhead, you don't have to hit the ship directly.
They're converted ICBMs, and require some kind of terminal guidance. Something traveling Mach 10+ can't use radar or infrared guidance. How does it hit a maneuvering ship?
Current thinking is drones or some other local surveillance would be used, radio linked to the DF-21. I wonder how well that will work alongside US electronic warfare capabilities?
Interesting stuff...
(This is why I am a fan of nuclear weapons, but it still negates the idea of a naval battle.)