[freebilly]

Mr. Karniol added, "the Chinese won't launch pre-emptive strikes against these places because I don't think they would want to draw the Americans into a conflict unless they really have to."

The Chinese have too much to lose. They are going to continue to posture and threaten, but until they are convinced that the US will do nothing, they'll continue doing nothing regarding Taiwan.

[Elliott Jackalope]

As I understand it, Taiwan is home to TSMC and UMC, two of the largest silicon chip foundries in the world. If China were to take over Taiwan, they would then control a large part of the integrated circuit production of the world. All of the "fabless" companies would be having to have their latest and greatest circuit technology fabbed by the ChiComs. This is not a good scenario IMHO.

[jwh_Denver]

"The Chinese people will pay any price to safeguard the unity of the motherland," he said.

Uh, I wonder if they asked the Chinese "people".

[Stingray51]

"They've got plenty of missiles aimed at Taiwan that can do damage, but the PLA doesn't have the means of amphibious assault to take the island," the diplomat said. "Without this, preventing independence is problematic," he added.

I assume that Taiwan's economy is built on exports. If so, all China would have to do to cause Taiwan tremendous pain would be to announce a naval blockade. I would think that China would not actually have to be able to enforce the blockade but that its mere announcement would be enough to make shipping so expensive that Taiwan's exports would be unable to compete. I see this as more likely, at least as the initial military move, than an outright invasion.

[RightWhale]

Looking ahead somewhat: If taking Taiwan turns out to be so expensive that China suffers economically for years to come, would China expect to be able to hold on to Taiwan afterwards, not to mention holding on to other territories around the edges such as Manchuria.

[tet68]

Unity of the Mother land BS.
They are terrified that a successful independence movement
will signal the beginning of a landslide of breakaway
"autonomous regions".