An updated article by Caitlin Talmadge an Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. It is one of several articles fully available in the latest 'Foreign Affairs': Do Nuclear Weapons Matter?

Near the beginning two passages as a "taster":
If deployed against China, the Pentagon’s preferred style of conventional warfare would be a potential recipe for nuclear escalation. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States’ signature approach to war has been simple: punch deep into enemy territory in order to rapidly knock out the opponent’s key military assets at minimal cost. But the Pentagon developed this formula in wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Serbia, none of which was a nuclear power.

China, by contrast, not only has nuclear weapons; it has also intermingled them with its conventional military forces, making it difficult to attack one without attacking the other. This means that a major U.S. military campaign targeting China’s conventional forces would likely also threaten its nuclear arsenal. Faced with such a threat, Chinese leaders could decide to use their nuclear weapons while they were still able to.
Link:https://reader.foreignaffairs.com/20...2/content.html