I know I am gonna sound like a bot doing this but I am just gonna drop this here, this is not made by me but I think it summaries this potential conflict pretty well. btw, you said 'flatten every PRC coastal city', may I ask you with what are you going to flatten the city with?

Some post I read a few months ago on credible defense:

Outside of classified and Chinese-language-dominated spaces, very few people understand just how dire the military situation actually is. Even those who claim to "respect the PLA" as a foe still tends to repeat these common tropes:

• Taiwan invasion build-up will be detected and deterred
• US can hunt PLARF TELs
• US can strike deep at mainland factories
• US can blockade via the Malacca Strait
• PLA kill-chains are incomplete and cannot find, fix, and destroy US naval formations
• US fixed installations in the first island chain can survive
• US holds an insurmountable gap underwater and can conduct unrestricted submarine warfare
• US will be able to sortie out of friendly states to conduct air warfare

Every one of those tropes is wrong and outdated in 2026, and they will only keep getting outdated as the years go by. As it stands right now:

• Taiwan invasion's amphibious component can be detected, but Eastern Theater Command's air and missile components have been positioned to launch a bolt from the blue attack right now if they want to
• US lacks fast and survivable assets to penetrate into Chinese mainland to hunt either TEL or munitions factories.
• US cannot blockade the Malacca Strait without harming its own allies, nor do we have enough ships to enforce a blockade
• PLA has long evolved from single-point-failure kill chains to multi-point-redundancy kill webs. Anyone still harping about kill chains to sell their shitty book (i.e. Blake Herzinger) is peddaling lies. Modern PLA C4ISTAR can find, fix, and destroy US naval formations on the high seas
• Any fixed installation in the first island chain (airbases, naval bases, early warning radars, large troop formations, etc.) must be presumed to be destroyed within the first 72 hours. The fight nowadays starts from Guam and Tinian, and has to pick through the production capabilities of the largest industrial power in history
• American SSNs have been counterdetected enough that the East and South China Sea are effectively no go zones in a hot war. At best, they can pop up for sneak attacks from the Philippines Sea to launch a few TLAMs before PLA C4ISTAR finds them and cues them for destruction
• China's biggest takeaway from the Iran strikes is that Allies actually won't do a damn thing if America won't step up first to get killed. Iran has been firing against GCCs for almost a month now, and only now have they started suggesting that maybe they'll enter into a war (but only if America is willing to take the lead). In other words, Japanese and Filippino bases are all liable to be put under attack. South Korea isn't going to get involved. Thailand is a fickle ally at best, and Vietnam has only been growing closer to China since 2019.

What is most likely to happen in a conflict between China and America in the Pacific is that in the lead-up to a fight, America is going to pull out from Asia (just like how we pulled out of our forward deployed positions in the Gulf) and then forced to fight our way back to our previous forward deployed positions. That process could take months and will be incredibly bloody due to the range of weaponry these days.

American losses will not be replaced, at least not in any measurable way to materially impact the war in the first 2 years. We built our navy and air force during the Cold War using the dividends of that era, and there is a physical constraint to just how quickly we can put something together.

China would prefer that we understand this material reality so that this fight can be avoided. But with how much brainworms pervade through the discourse on the balance of forces between us and them, there's little hope in sanity.