He told the New York Times that he thinks the U.S. will “very likely” find itself in a three-front war with China, Russia, and Iran. As a result, he said, the Pentagon should continue developing autonomous weapons at full speed, pointing to big mismatches in how far the U.S. would be willing to go while fighting a war compared with other countries.
China considers itself a regional power, and doesn't delude itself into calling itself a world power like Russia does. So it's unlikely they'd direct any strikes at CONUS if a war broke out. They would instead try to force all US/allied influences out of their sphere of influence and just play the defensive game until some kind of peace could be negotiated.
They have aspirations to become a global power in the next century and possibly could do it, the real question is do they intend to share the stage with the US or find ways to erode US power down to regional power and rise up to take their place?