Firstly, that completely ignores what I said about the scope of a full on war. China air force, army, navy, missile forces attacking Indian forces directly through land in response to India attacking Chinese merchant ships. How will India deal with that?? That's what attacking Chinese merchant ships and incited all-out war will bring.
Secondly, Chinese ASBMs can be fired from long distances away to target Indian naval vessels in the Indian ocean. Chinese destroyers and submarines will supplement this. Liaoning has limited air wing capability but it's enough air power to deal with what India's navy can muster unless it's a battle close enough to India where MKIs from land can participate. But even then, smart money says the MKIs will be more than preoccupied with all the J-10X and J-11X pouring in through the western front.
India will not escalate like this and see their country in flames.
Long way to go, yes, but that's only because China is going so very far. Catching up is needed, only in the certain areas of deficiency (whereas gap-widening is needed in areas of strength), but cherry-picking China's weaknesses against foreign niche strengths does not mean that China is behind in the big picture. The US sources a lot of precision machinery too from these 2 countries; does the US also have a "long way to go to catch up?" If China actually did all the catching up and became impervious to even cherry-picking niche examples, it would literally be the best at everything in the world, which no nation has ever achieved (but maybe China will!). China can produce a 5th generation stealth fighter (selected out of 2 designs). Can Germany or Japan do that? Chinese trains outshine both German and Japanese counterparts both by domestic operation and by foreign bidding. Chinese supercomputers are eating everyone else's lunch and they're getting ready to take a backseat to Chinese quantum technology. Looks like these countries have a lot of catching up to do with China too... except they're falling farther behind.
