which is why china is pre-emptively claiming ownership of the south china sea, in an attempt to prevent the ability for any blockades to form in the first place!
While on paper, the US makes "guarantees" about freedom of navigation, this is even less reliable than the toilet paper it is written on.
China only needs to wait for a couple of years for Musk, Trump and Vance to have destroyed any remnants of the alliances, though.
And by "free world" I guess you mean the anglosphere, gradually shrinking globalist parts of the EU, and perhaps Japan/South Korea. That's now less than 15% of the global population and declining. Economically BRICS overcame the G7 back in 2018 [2], and the difference has only grown far more stark since. The times have really changed a lot over the past ~20 years. I think the collapse of the USSR was probably the worst thing to ever happen to the US, because it gave us a taste of global hegemony that was never sustainable, yet left us addicted to its fleeting flavor.
[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_density_of_T...
[2] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1412425/gdp-ppp-share-wo...
As is China in respect of energy.
Beijing knows this. But the timeline on which they become energy self sufficient unfortunately meshes poorly with their military demographics. Of course now, they have former American allies from which to recruit manpower if necessary.
Aren't they buying cheap oil and natural gas from Russia?
Most of China’s energy arrives by sea. That makes them intensely vulnerable to blockade.
And how will the free world replace goods and raw materials they now buy from China?
Apart from NATO countries all the rest will continue to do business with China. They do not care about the quarells between US, EU and China.
If a collective west made transitive trade embargoes, anything could happen.
But yes, the world is growing, and the west is a smaller piece of the pie than we used to be.
A managed escalation would blockade China, or at least ensure the rest of the free world never trades with China again.
Similarly, a local conflict could ensure chip facilities in Taiwan aren't surrendered intact.
The US doesn't have to win a hot conflict. Just start a cold war.
I still think the US has allies in Europe that would sanction China indefinitely. They'd probably also show up with something, if called.