Yea nah. In theory I agree with you. In practice I don't believe Taiwan has much time left on the clock. My expectation is that sometime in the 2020s Taiwan will be Crimea'd.
> Chinese commanders fear they may be forced into armed contest with an enemy that is better trained, better motivated, and better prepared for the rigors of warfare than troops the PLA could throw against them. A cross-strait war looks far less like an inevitable victory for China than it does a staggeringly risky gamble.
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> Easton estimates that Taiwanese, American, and Japanese leaders will know that the PLA is preparing for a cross-strait war more than 60 days before hostilities begin. They will know for certain that an invasion will happen more than 30 days before the first missiles are fired. This will give the Taiwanese ample time to move much of their command and control infrastructure into hardened mountain tunnels, move their fleet out of vulnerable ports, detain suspected agents and intelligence operatives, litter the ocean with sea mines, disperse and camouflage army units across the country, put the economy on war footing, and distribute weapons to Taiwan’s 2.5 million reservists.
> There are only 13 beaches on Taiwan’s western coast that the PLA could possibly land at. Each of these has already been prepared for a potential conflict. Long underground tunnels—complete with hardened, subterranean supply depots—crisscross the landing sites. The berm of each beach has been covered with razor-leaf plants. Chemical treatment plants are common in many beach towns—meaning that invaders must prepare for the clouds of toxic gas any indiscriminate saturation bombing on their part will release. This is how things stand in times of peace.
I don't disagree with the war assessment, it makes reasonable points.
It doesn't consider the very plausible scenario where Taiwan chooses not to fight (or chooses not to fight for very long). Instead they choose capitulation as an ideal decision to spare the enormous destruction they'd suffer, so as to keep their relatively high standard of living intact. Among nations with at least 10m people, Taiwan ranks around #21 in GDP per capita with a very respectable $25k. They've built something nice for themselves over a long, difficult climb.
China can play a long-term game of decimation, spanning years. They don't have to invade short-term, they can flatten Taiwan with non-stop bombing, terror-inspiring hits (when is the next air raid going to go off?!?), wait them out until inevitable capitulation. It's about long-term territorial gain and the national premise of unifying greater China, they can easily spare the loss of economic output from Taiwan's devastation. Just 15 years ago Taiwan would have been a huge share of Chinese output if unified; today that's no longer true and China is increasing the gap by the day. Who's going to stop the stand-off rain of missiles and bombing that can go on indefinitely against Taiwan? The people eventually give up, China has no need to invade to win a war.
They'll approach it as a hundred plus year project as needed. The only thing that might change that style of thinking, is if Xi needs to prop up his position (through military adventure, gaining prestige from reclaiming Taiwan), which may be eroded if China's economy falters.
The 1995-96 Taiwan Strait Crisis is illustrative in this regard: The Clinton administration sent two aircraft carriers and accompanying ships toward Taiwan. Beijing threatened a fierce response: if the U.S. Navy entered the Strait, it would face a "sea of fire." Washington turned the ships around. See [1].
China is a lot more powerful today that it was 2 decades ago.
> Among nations with at least 10m people, Taiwan ranks around #21 in GDP per capita with a very respectable $25k. They've built something nice for themselves over a long, difficult climb.
The Taiwanese are aware of what waits for those who cooperate with the PRC. Look at Hong Kong. Where’s their freedom now? Look at Xinjiang, at the treatment of Falun Dafa. Taiwan will be colonised, again. First the Dutch, then the Japanese, then Guomindang and finally the CCP.
> After the Party seized power in 1949, Mao would systematically apply the same techniques to one group of Chinese after another: “landlords” and village leadership; gamblers, gangsters, and criminals; Christian congregations, Daoist temples and the Buddhist sangha; business circles, corporations, and stock-jobbers; universities, schools, and intellectual clubs; hospitals, aid workers, and relief organizations; minor political parties and independent political groups; workers associations and unions; clan groupings and ancestral schools; martial artists and Confucian hold-overs—any set of organized and self-governing citizens was soon a target of a struggle campaign. In time each would be destroyed or brought into a subservient relationship with the Communist Party.
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> Today The Cause has flipped—officially—from socialist revolution to national rejuvenation. The Party works under the same schema but has shifted the “people” that Mao identified with specific economic classes to the nation at large.[6] Mass mobilization campaigns have been retired. But struggle and united front campaigns have not. Xi’s great corruption purge, the Uyghur labor camps of Xinjiang, the attack on Christians across China—these all follow the same methods for crushing and coercing “enemies” developed by Mao and the Party in the early ‘40s. “One Country, Two Systems,” interference campaigns in the Chinese diaspora, the guided, gilded tours given to Musk and his ilk—these all follow the same methods for corrupting and controlling “allies” developed by Mao and the Party that same decade. The tools have never changed. The only thing that has changed is the Party’s assessment of who is an "enemy" and who is part of the "people."
You’re quite right that if China puts conquering Taiwan above all other aims they can do it, if the US and Japan let them. If they back Taiwan up it’s not happening. The US is quite capable of defending Taiwan all by itself and if the US doesn’t back Taiwan up its credibility as an ally is dead.
1. Amphibious invasions are hard. The Taiwan Strait is nothing to sneeze at, especially for a military with no recent experience in conducting one like the PLA/N.
2. Taiwan has a far more economic impact upon the global economy than Ukraine. Other nations would be far more disturbed by the disruption of a first world economy, than a developing one like Ukraine’s. I don’t think we’ve seen the loss of as an economy as significant as Taiwan’s in recent history.
