ooo boy, China has enough nukes to not get nuked, and an excess population of male military age people of around 25000000 as potential soldiers, if say they were offered
big signing bonuses and guaranteed positions for honorable service discharges, they can field an improbably large armed force, which means any war that happens without them is a massive victory for them.
It's also important to note that China demonstrated hypersonic interceptors 10 years ago, and just dont talk about it much now, but the recent demonstration of chinese weapons last year with India vs Pakistan has
forced certain re calculations.
A 'world' war without China, is WW2.1, not WWIII