Well, I'm not sure what you mean by "massive response" as China's nuclear capability is more for regional prurposes (i.e. India) though I do believe they have some ICBMs capable of reaching anywhere in north america. But their military resources are much smaller (e.g. they only have a couple of aircraft carriers and no supercarriers) and the PLA isn't really set up for projection of force at a distance.

I do agree to the extent that though the US would win any initial skirmish the long term viability of such an effort close to or on the Chinese mainland is probably not great.

Then again I can't come up with any reason the US would want to fight a war with China either (or vice versa), but who knows these days.