Why do folks think that China has a specific deadline in mind? To set a particular year/date with one's personal interests in mind could tremendously compromsie the prospects of such an operation succeeding.
And I thought the 2027 date was debunked?
PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
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And I thought the 2027 date was debunked?
My guess is that Xi will go for one more term.
There's still another 5 years before it becomes really obvious that the power balance has shifted towards China.
And Xi wasn't really elected this this around.
They don't have a date, it is more likely that the US has a date. The US has exponentially increased the levels and nature of its provocations around Taiwan since the early 2020s at least, to a dangerous zone, at a moment when China is becoming a hyperpower compared to them (and in a place that is 100km away from the mainland).
Therefore, anyone with three working brain cells could understand what it entails and that they will not put up with that at some point in the next few years. 2027 is I think the date that the US plans to do the final Taiwan provocation after they consolidate the domestic politics for this presidency. (They want to try and end China's rise.)
Without US provocations = who knows when they would have reunified with Taiwan, maybe even 10 years from now (when the public sentiment finally puts it as an 'unavoidable' level anymore).
But, with those provocations in the picture, that timeline gets squeezed more and more, because people see China's ascension and the US rotting and collapse, and question why their government is doing nothing. Everything is about public sentiment, after a certain point, not even the CPC can guide people to be 'humble' anymore.
The Chinese surely can see this geopolitical trap. That's why they've explicitly stated that the US is trying to goad China into launching a Taiwan campaign. They will likely do their utmost to my minimize the risk of a conflict; this was evident during Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, during which the Chinese side did not respond kinetically despite Chinese people's calls to do so.
Nothing short of a direct Taiwanese pre-emptive strike or deployment of foreign offensive weaponry on the island would trigger a Chinese operation, IMHO.
That's the key point, China likely won’t choose to initiate a large-scale operation against Taiwan in the next 5-10 years, but they will still have to respond with military exercises or other countermeasures, depending on the severity of the provocation just like during the Pelosi visit back then. That's enough to catalyze the war.
Now, suppose, next time something like this happens or worse than Pelosi, China decides to send a message by boarding and inspecting ships that interact with Taiwan.
The US, under some pretext like "defending international waters," sends warships to intervene. Tensions escalate, leading to collisions or accidents. At that point, it's already war.
Of course, this is just a simple surface-level example to illustrate the point. The reality is that if the US wants war, they will get it. China isn’t going to sit back and stay silent in the face of repeated, escalating provocations, they will have to respond in some way proportionally.
And as their previous measures fail to deter these provocations, their responses will become increasingly aggressive. They have a domestic audience constantly watching this.
The more the US escalates, the more severe China's responses will have to be to match it, no matter how restrained they are as a baseline.
Eventually, their reaction will reach a tipping point where the US can spin it into a justification for war, one they can sell to their own people and the so-called "international community" at least, but that's enough for them.
The reality is that the US doesn’t actually care about Taiwan, it’s not about protecting democracy or sovereignty. What they truly care about is stopping China’s rise, particularly the threat it poses to the dollar-based financial system.
That’s the real reason they’ve decided China must be stopped. And since all other avenues have failed, in their minds, only a direct military confrontation remains.
People focus too much on Taiwan, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s relatively insignificant. It just happens to be the most useful proxy for the US to manufacture a war with China.
At this point, the trajectory is clear, the US has committed to this path. The only thing left is to resolve its current internal political struggles before fully setting things in motion.
Edit: Even if everything finally goes down in 2027 or 2028, like I predict it will; China’s strategic patience and wisdom have still bought them another five or more years to develop, despite the intense US provocations since 2022 and back. That alone is pretty impressive. At the end of the day, this is not something you can dodge forever once your opponent has made up their mind completely and committed so much effort.
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I don't see how though. At least in terms of a direct confrontation, there is no way the US + Japan + Aus/GB can prevail in a large scale conventional conflict in Asia-Pacific region.
All you need to look is the available bases and disposition of forces. The biggest problem for the US military planners is that they have no strategic depth in this region. There are literally about a dozen or so locations in Japan, Phillipines, Marianas that need to be knocked out, then the ability for advanced forces to operate vanishes (S. Koreans are highly unlikely to allow direct strikes from their territory, BTW).
After that, the closest things they have are places like Wake, Chuuk, or Cocos (WRT to SCS bases), and those places do not have sufficient infrastructure to sustain anything, and are at the limit of where key enablers can be stationed at and still be in the theatre. Then even further you have places like Aleutians, Pearl, and Aus main land, that really mean little in terms of direct support of operations in the said theatre.
So how will / how should China react if corrupt DPP leadership indeed initiates a tech transfer to US ?
Nothing, it is already agreed upon by Xi and Trump. TSMC is replaceable by SMIC, moving to USA won't stop China's progress.
Agreed on most points, though the example you provided concerns a direct conflict between the US and China which may or may not involve an operation with Taiwan. Neither the Chinese nor Americans want a direct US-China conflict; instead, the US hopes that China will bog itself down - economically and militarily - in a Taiwan operation. This would not only stunt China's economic progress but also give the US the pretext to (1) reinforce its military presence in the Pacific and (2) make $$$ by selling arms to Taiwan.
Hence, I suspect that the US modus operandi is not to spark or provoke a conflict with China directly but rather to push Taiwan to undertake provocations that it hopes would trigger a Chinese response. So, for China, its long-term aspirations would require it to maintain the status quo and not launch a Taiwan operation unless its security concerns are under imminent and significant threat (e.g. a Taiwanese pre-emptive strike, the basing of foreign long-range offensive weaponry, or the development of Taiwanese WMDs).
I assumed that an isolated China vs. Taiwan operation was no longer a topic of debate and that China would handle the situation with absolute ease. Taiwan is not Ukraine, not in terms of size, population density distribution, willpower, or available supply lines.
It is a small island across a vast sea that is PRC, with a population of barely 1-2% of it, lacking a strong military focus, heavily dependent on external support, and easily blockaded or struck from a short distance on key targets. With enough PRC firepower, Taiwan could be forced into submission with minimal ground engagement.
This wouldn’t bog China down, it would be over in a matter of weeks. As for economic consequences, if Western sanctions against Russia failed and even backfired, the effect on China would be exponentially worse for the West. This time, sanctions alone might collapse Western economies entirely if they have no alternative plan beyond economic warfare.
Such a war is good for business in strong technocracies in their ascension, just look at Russia’s economic performance since the Ukraine conflict began. Their GDP has grown by 8% in two years, a rate surpassing any Western economy.
And this isn’t just a GDP metric; every other economic indicator aligns with this trend. A war over Taiwan wouldn’t halt China’s progress, it would accelerate it.
In times of conflict, China could further boost domestic production, de-risk from the West, and mobilize and eliminate inefficiencies under the pressure of a national crisis, much like Russia under Putin.
If the U.S. provoked China into taking Taiwan and then did nothing, it would be one of the dumbest moves imaginable. In that scenario, I genuinely believe the U.S. would collapse soon after, no exaggeration. I won’t elaborate further, as that isn’t the topic here.
The U.S. has indeed increased its presence in the Pacific as much as it could. But their struggle to do more buildup isn’t due to strategic restraint, it’s due to their declining ability to build infrastructure. If the U.S. had China’s industrial and logistical capacity, they would have already built ten times as many installations in the region.
To conclude: the tech war failed, the trade war failed, military technology competition failed, intelligence operations in China failed, soft power influence failed, and diplomatic isolation efforts in the region failed. The only option the U.S. has left now is direct military confrontation.
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