Guide: Starting as China

China starts with Nuclear Power, Bunker Busters and a Police State government. China (In my opinion) is one of the stronger starting countries due to their good positioning, starting government and starting technologies.This guide is made for full lobby games, but still works in non-full lobby games. The first thing you want to do is build 3 more barracks since that will allow you to spawn more infantry for free. Next you want to either ally Japan, or kill them. Personally, I'd recommend allying them if you're new / you don't want to waste your army on them. If nobody is playing as Japan, that's even better since there is more land for you. Once you have a decently sized army you want to grab the first 2 cities to the south of you (The ones without defencive buildings) like so:

After that, you want to build more tanks and infantry, capture the major city to the south of you and proceed to get as many cities as you can to the south of you before Japan can do anything about it. China is good for this style of play because they start out with bunker busters which allow their vehicles to deal more damage to structures right from the start of the game. Weapon upgrades are important early on for your infantry as they can almost double the damage to armored targets. Next, make some builders in the cities you just captured and then build nuclear power plants next to the Major city. Usually you need more economy early game, but China can capture many cities early on so it doesn't matter as much. Assuming that India is in the game, you want to build a nuclear missile silo near them and bait out their army so you can nuke them:

Once India is dead, you're free to do pretty much any strategy you want. You can keep pushing towards the Middle East or Russia (Whichever one is the easier target) or build a fleet and kill Japan or help them kill their enemies (And steal their cities).