Or they could just muster the resources and do it anyway, with no warning.
No unusual mining power growth can escape people's attention, you get the most paranoid bunch of guys in the world here, why bother with additional resources?
And it's not even relevant, any prevention against 51% attack has to be implemented such that it's effective against all possible 51% attacks(which you have to do anyway if you can), to just target a particular group of people is ridiculous.
They would do it as closely together as possible. They're unlikely to connect one machine at a time to the network.
It's an example of a nation. But yes, it could be
any nation with enough resources.
Exactly, so it's not related to how many nodes are, or even how much hashpower is in China, right?
Not to say a 51% attack can only be pulled off by a single node with 51% of the hashing power, not a lot of nodes combined together.
So what OP said is not relevant.
The OP asked a question. So it's as relevant as a question can be.
What I said is relevant: "A government attack is a significant risk. Think about China: they have the resources to pull off the heinous deed."