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Frankly this seems to me to be a fundamental misreading of the situation. China has said repeatedly and loudly that Taiwan coming under their control is practically an existential question. That it is non negotiable. And under Xi this has only grown louder. They can’t change their mind without self-humiliation. They also have a surplus of jobless young men with radicalized ideas and a desire to distract the populace from an economy in trouble - literally the classic case of “civilization goes to war”
I haven’t detected any shift in urgency. There’s a nightly show on CCTV where talking heads prattle about Taiwan, but apparently they have been doing this show for thirty years.
The message is still “Taiwan is a part of China,” same as it ever was. I guess there might be a bit more accusations of American meddling, but that may just be reflecting reality and not designed to escalate.
They also don’t have timelines driven by elections, and have no problem waiting until reintegration is a foregone conclusion.
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I’m not saying that China doesn’t want Taiwan. They do want it and they shall have it. I’m saying that the urgency about “muh chips” is fiction invented by American journalists, Chinese ambitions over Taiwan have nothing to do with semiconductors and everything to do with national identity and myth.
It therefore makes sense for the CCP to wait until the West is no longer committed to defend TSMC (which should be no longer than a decade at the most because of large efforts to scale up production in the US and Europe), especially given advances in Chinese chip production, and then to continue with the long term plan of pressure.
The main reason that the United States and China both want Taiwan is that Taiwan is what allows the US to potentially bottle up the Chinese navy and keep them out of the South China Sea. It’s primarily important as a naval asset. Almost no one talks about this. China has to get Taiwan back if it ever wants to be a great naval power. If China gets Taiwan back as a smoking ruin, without TSMC, without the economy, without the people, it would still be worth it.
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