Dingyibvs, for a student of Sun Tzu, you easily forget the Far Emperordingyibvs wrote: However, don't expect them to be so quick in admitting conventional defeat. If the situation is indeed as you stated, which I think is ludicrous BTW given current day Chinese attitudes, that a weak Chinese leader managed to piss off the people and lose a significant border conflict with India, then you can expect a conventional escalation. Just as you had assumed, he will have no room to back down, so expect something just short of total war from China to take back any lost territory. That is the only way for the CCP to preserve itself since either admitting defeat or going nuclear means self-destruction. Manufacturing capabilities will be important then, as well as wealth. So once again, I ask, is India up to the task?
China doesn't have infinite resources. If it is facing a conventional loss in Aksai Chin or Tawang, and decides to go for total war against India to save its face... what a golden opportunity that will provide for the United States. While China pours billions into its total war effort, the US will be overjoyed, and encourage them to spend more and lose more in the easiest way possible... by supplying India with everything it needs to prolong the war for as long as China tries to fight it.
You hype the economic clout of China with Western powers and claim they might engage in "war profiteering" with India in case of an India-China war. No doubt China's production capacity will exceed India's... but the United States' exceeds China's. And the United States continues to supply even little Taiwan with the latest weapons in its arsenal... despite all the fuss and noise about China's economic clout, Beijing hasn't been able to do a thing about that.
Do you really think the US will pass up such an opportunity to set China back by many, many decades as a strategic competitor? What better opportunity for the Americans to achieve this, than to arm and aid India to retaliate pound for pound against China's "total war?" It will boost the American economy and not one American life will be lost. The Americans will get to see all their latest weapons systems in action against the much-vaunted Chinese military machine. By the end of it China's economy will be depleted to exhaustion. And there will be no superpowerdom for China for another century to come, at least.