1) There is no single international force on this plane that can even breach chinese defenses on the most of its eastern coastline, let alone
occupy.
2)There is no single international force on this planet that can hope to successfully occupy any portion of China for more than a week or two.
3)China's current weak spots are: (a) Military presence in the Tibetan Autonomous region (b) Military presence along the western borders of Xinjiang
(c) no real direct influence over most of its vital supply chain path for energy etc. (d) Inability to project continued military power more than
500-1000km off its borders (e)China has had no recent experience in any live warfare and has very limited integrated/coalition ops and/or exercise
experience.
Now China's aggressively dealing with fixing (a), (b), (c) and (d) since the early 90s. It has made great progress on (a),(b) and (c) while (d) is
still a work in progress.
Now for (e) you cannot really go a pick fights with others just to stay in touch!

So one needs to conduct exercises dissimilar forces with others
as regularly as possible. China has not done that until recently. Exercises with the SCO/Russia are a start but they really need to look further. That
may be tough in the vicinity because besides the SCO, Burma and Pakistan, nobody's really quite friendly with them.
There are a few exercises planned with India, but these are more tension diffusers and CBMs rather than true operational integration opportunities.
Plus these exercises will mostly happen in Mainland China.
IMO China needs to look further out. The ME may not be a good idea right now but those rogue sub Saharan nations look promising. I do know that some
Chinese activity is present there, but the true military nature of those activities is unknown to me.
Certain countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia etc. are very promising areas too. Stationing forces that far out and/or conducting military exercises
that far out will give a true measure of opertional readiness and sustainability of the PLA so far from home. I'm sure they will learn a lot from
these experiences.
[edit on 22-11-2008 by Daedalus3]