This almost happened in 2016 after the Philippine sea kangaroo court. The US carrier groups were planning on pushing right into the SCS after the arbitration. After a high alert, they quietly exited the region overnight as they had been locked on by the rocket force.
And this was back in 2016 when the PLARF/PLAN themselves knew they were not fully ready, but were willing to sacrifice most of their fleet and missile reserve to destroy the carrier battle groups if the US decided to actually invade the region.
Even back in the 90s and early 2000s they tried to plan for almost everything except one, surrender. In the 2000s with no counter to F22s or similar advanced jets, they even considered sacrificing 8 of their J8-IIs per F22 just in order to get close enough to fire a missile.
This almost happened in 2016 after the Philippine sea kangaroo court. The US carrier groups were planning on pushing right into the SCS after the arbitration. After a high alert, they quietly exited the region overnight as they had been locked on by the rocket force.
And this was back in 2016 when the PLARF/PLAN themselves knew they were not fully ready, but were willing to sacrifice most of their fleet and missile reserve to destroy the carrier battle groups if the US decided to actually invade the region.
Even back in the 90s and early 2000s they tried to plan for almost everything except one, surrender. In the 2000s with no counter to F22s or similar advanced jets, they even considered sacrificing 8 of their J8-IIs per F22 just in order to get close enough to fire a missile.