I think some critical points are missing here. The PLA’s sustained buildup and repeated drills around Taiwan, and the government rhetoric surrounding them, are hard to reconcile the idea that invasion is unlikely.
Also, the framing assumes a kind of benevolence, as if Beijing accepts the status quo. But Beijing doesn’t see Taiwan as independent; it sees it as already Chinese territory. The real advantage for China right now is asymmetric: every year the West grows more dependent on Taiwan’s semiconductors, while China pushes hard for self-reliance. That means the cost of crisis rises faster for us than for them.
Assigning Taiwan’s apparent lack of concern purely to personal agency overlooks two powerful forces: the cultural instinct captured by the saying “the bird that sticks its head out gets shot” and Beijing’s sustained psychological operations aimed at shaping Taiwanese perceptions. Ignoring those factors isn’t just incomplete; it risks crossing into naïveté.
Some very great points here. Appreciate the thoughtfulness.
I think drills are a gesture rather than a commitment. China flexes its muscle, Taiwan isn't acting that much out of line anyway, so everyone goes home happy. I don't think invasion becomes necessary there, especially when Taiwan isn't that interested in fighting China and amphibious invasions are expensive.
Not sure I see the benevolence bit. The arguments are mainly around what's profitable (even though the first question does ask about when elites might just want to use it anyway). Taiwan isn't actively revolting against China so I don't think they'd have a reason to fight.
Re the semis that's true. It'll be interesting to see whether china becomes independent with GPUs and tech before West gets foundries going.
I think part of the framing that is missing is that it’s also 1) a domestic tool—China is fine (well, better) domestically right now, so it’s less of a danger, 2) a matter of ego, as some of the folks who’ve analyzed Xi more closely. It’s hard to enter the pantheon after death along Mao without something fairly significant. Merely being another good steward (… which is questionable to say the least) doesn’t really work. Taiwan fits the bill.
1) Taiwan is very important to Beijing and President Xi
2) An invasion would be very messy and difficult, and the consequences would be bad for China, the CCP, and its economy
This means that the best option for China is to play the long game, infiltrate Taipei, and influence Taiwan's people to think differently about China over time.
Given the massive difference in power between China (1.4b pop) and Taiwan (23m), there is no reason to make these diplomatic overtures if the intention is to invade anyways.
I think we’re aware of the same data. The attempt of Taipei to crack down on infiltration (which is a real thing) has actively harmed my business, so I’m quite viscerally conscious of it.
The circumstances over the past years have made things worse for peaceful/negotiated/manipulated reunification. The KMT’s poor showings, weakening opinion polls on Chinese identity (and either mixed or worsening polls on reunification), and better controls from Taipei (see above) makes it all harder.
The diplomatic overtures are because of your point #2. At the same time, as you yourself have (aptly) cited in terms of The Great Illusion, it’s not enough to stop people from pulling the trigger on hot conflicts. We have our own experiences and touchstones.
Mine is having tons of people telling me how smart Putin was and how it was impossible he was going to invade. It was all a clever negotiating tactic, and much of the influence campaigns were in order to bring Ukraine closer. Besides that, Putin and his close associates enjoyed Western society too much, were too urbane, and relied too much on Western trade in continuing to improve/modernize the Russian economy. The Russian elite were surprisingly accessible for many people, including Putin himself. I couldn’t speak from personal experience with him, but a lot of people could. Obviously, unhappily, my sense that a lot of the moves seemed too real was right, and theirs in reading the incentives was wrong.
The scale is different here, though at the same time the stakes are higher (Ukraine is a relatively not-that-strategically important strip of land vs Taiwan’s place in the island chain). Regardless, I don’t really think rationality plays much of a role in these decisions—if they did, neither WWI or Ukraine or a lot of other conflicts would have ever happened.
In any case, I do generally hope you and other optimists are right. I used to be the most worried about Taiwan among anyone I knew—though now some mainstream folks have sprinted past me in their probability estimates of disaster. Still, I still worry a lot about it, and think it’s far from impossible or a vanishingly small probability.
We can agree to disagree on this issue. The important part is to have an open, frank, and respectful discussion about the merits. Your perspective is valuable and appreciated.
To your point, the DPP has become quite radical. Unfortunately in the 2024 presidential election, the TPP and KMT split the vote, otherwise Taipei would have a more rational government at this point and your business would not be suffering under the poor governance of the Lai administration. The total failure of the Great Recall, contrary to all predictions by the pan-Green side, does indicate that there has been a real shift in public opinion away from the DPP. This bodes well for future cross-strait relations.
"The principal cause of the conflict is the NATO decision to bring Ukraine into the alliance, which virtually all Russian leaders see as an existential threat that must be eliminated. NATO expansion, however, is part of a broader strategy that is designed to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. Bringing Kyiv into the European Union (EU) and promoting a color revolution in Ukraine – turning it into pro-Western liberal democracy – are the other two prongs of the policy. Russia leaders fear all three prongs, but they fear NATO expansion the most. To deal with this threat, Russia launched a preventive war on 24 February 2022."
Mearsheimer outlines that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was in fact a rational response to continued NATO expansion, as Moscow's diplomatic efforts to prevent the West from doing this over past few decades had failed: "Russia has always seen Ukraine in NATO as an existential threat that must be prevented at all costs. That logic is the driving force behind the Ukraine war."
The primary miscalculation leading up to the Ukraine war seems to have been the West's underestimation of the strength of the Russian military: "Probably the best evidence that Putin was not seen as a serious threat during his first fourteen years in office is that he was an invited guest at the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, which is where the alliance announced that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become members. Putin, of course, was enraged by that decision and made his anger known. But his opposition to that announcement had hardly any effect on Washington because Russia’s military was judged to be too weak to stop further NATO enlargement, just as it had been too weak to stop the 1999 and 2004 waves of expansion. The West thought it could once again shove NATO expansion down Russia’s throat."
This led directly to Putin's biggest fear: "President Biden, who moved into the White House in January 2021, had long been committed to bringing Ukraine into NATO and was a super-hawk toward Russia. Unsurprisingly, on 14 June 2021, NATO issued a communiqué at its annual summit in Brussels, which said: “We reiterate the decision made at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance.”"
While the post Why China Won't Invade Taiwan presents an optimistic outlook, the optimism is based on a pragmatic assessment of Beijing's existing position, as well as the clear differences with this situation compared to other geopolitical conflicts around the world.
Agreed, I think I commented about your original piece that your argument is better than most of the ones I come across on the topic (and I like your citation of The Great Illusion)!
We have the same data, but come to different conclusions. It’s just the nature of these things. And here’s to hoping you’re right!
The PLA buildup and drills are addressed in the post:
"So, the possibility of invasion, the military drills, the missile tests, and the probing of Taiwan's Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) are less about an imminent D-Day and more about maintaining a proverbial Sword of Damocles over Taipei.
Beijing will undoubtedly continue to sharpen this sword to motivate a greater willingness for Taipei to come to the negotiating table. But Beijing is also acutely aware that if that sword were to actually fall, the consequences for the PRC itself could be catastrophic."
While Beijing sees Taiwan as part of its territory, the fact that its top goal is peaceful reunification indicates that the status quo is still a reality that must be overcome.
Beijing has made it clear that it is willing to negotiate with Taipei under the One China policy and 1992 Consensus: "We are ready to engage with all parties, groups, or individuals in Taiwan in a broad exchange of views aimed at resolving the political differences between the two sides based on the one-China principle and the 1992 Consensus."
While it may be true that the cost of crisis rises faster for the West than China, this post is primarily making the case that the cost of crisis is very high for China.
The fact of the matter is that negotiation not only an option for Taiwan but the vastly preferable option for Beijing as well.
In April 2024, President Xi told former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou (translated): "People on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are all Chinese. There are no knots in our hearts that cannot be untied. There are no problems that cannot be discussed. There is no force that can separate us."
Thus, there really is no need for Taiwan to be concerned. All they need to do to eliminate any chance of conflict is to be willing to accept the One China policy and 1992 consensus. With this framework, there were official relations between Beijing and Taipei under President Ma Ying-jeou (2008-16) and even a meeting between President Xi and Ma in Singapore in 2015.
I am not a China expert (though I did spend over a year working there). My best source of information about Chinese politics is a good friend who's a Chinese national, who follows Chinese politics closely.
He told me a couple years ago that Xi Jinping, in order to secure his third term, essentially made a promise that he would "solve the Taiwan problem" before the end of his term (2027).
My searches for any confirmation of this in Western sources came up blank (Claude didn't exactly call me a liar, but...). However, when I asked Claude to help me search in Mandarin sources, this is what it came up with:
The Chinese-language reporting does connect Xi's third term ambitions more directly to Taiwan than I found in English sources. The analysis suggests that Xi has indeed used Taiwan unification as a political tool to justify his unprecedented third term, even if he hasn't made an explicit "5-year promise."
---
So, regardless of whether Xi made an explicit promise, he apparently has been using "solving the Taiwan problem" as a political tool. And that suggests that regardless of the external situation, he may face pressure to take a more aggressive stance in order to hold off internal opposition.
In short, the external factors weighing against invasion may have limited impact if the internal pressures to keep his promise are strong enough. And I'm not sure any of us in the West have a good enough view of those internal pressures to be able to predict with any confidence how Xi will act.
I think some critical points are missing here. The PLA’s sustained buildup and repeated drills around Taiwan, and the government rhetoric surrounding them, are hard to reconcile the idea that invasion is unlikely.
Also, the framing assumes a kind of benevolence, as if Beijing accepts the status quo. But Beijing doesn’t see Taiwan as independent; it sees it as already Chinese territory. The real advantage for China right now is asymmetric: every year the West grows more dependent on Taiwan’s semiconductors, while China pushes hard for self-reliance. That means the cost of crisis rises faster for us than for them.
Assigning Taiwan’s apparent lack of concern purely to personal agency overlooks two powerful forces: the cultural instinct captured by the saying “the bird that sticks its head out gets shot” and Beijing’s sustained psychological operations aimed at shaping Taiwanese perceptions. Ignoring those factors isn’t just incomplete; it risks crossing into naïveté.
Some very great points here. Appreciate the thoughtfulness.
I think drills are a gesture rather than a commitment. China flexes its muscle, Taiwan isn't acting that much out of line anyway, so everyone goes home happy. I don't think invasion becomes necessary there, especially when Taiwan isn't that interested in fighting China and amphibious invasions are expensive.
Not sure I see the benevolence bit. The arguments are mainly around what's profitable (even though the first question does ask about when elites might just want to use it anyway). Taiwan isn't actively revolting against China so I don't think they'd have a reason to fight.
Re the semis that's true. It'll be interesting to see whether china becomes independent with GPUs and tech before West gets foundries going.
I think part of the framing that is missing is that it’s also 1) a domestic tool—China is fine (well, better) domestically right now, so it’s less of a danger, 2) a matter of ego, as some of the folks who’ve analyzed Xi more closely. It’s hard to enter the pantheon after death along Mao without something fairly significant. Merely being another good steward (… which is questionable to say the least) doesn’t really work. Taiwan fits the bill.
There's no question that
1) Taiwan is very important to Beijing and President Xi
2) An invasion would be very messy and difficult, and the consequences would be bad for China, the CCP, and its economy
This means that the best option for China is to play the long game, infiltrate Taipei, and influence Taiwan's people to think differently about China over time.
As for the "pantheon after death" theory and the idea that this will motivate an invasion, it contradicts Xi's actions in meeting with Taiwan President Ma in 2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Ma%E2%80%93Xi_meeting) and again in 2024 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H_xDBpvU10&t=323s).
Given the massive difference in power between China (1.4b pop) and Taiwan (23m), there is no reason to make these diplomatic overtures if the intention is to invade anyways.
I think we’re aware of the same data. The attempt of Taipei to crack down on infiltration (which is a real thing) has actively harmed my business, so I’m quite viscerally conscious of it.
The circumstances over the past years have made things worse for peaceful/negotiated/manipulated reunification. The KMT’s poor showings, weakening opinion polls on Chinese identity (and either mixed or worsening polls on reunification), and better controls from Taipei (see above) makes it all harder.
The diplomatic overtures are because of your point #2. At the same time, as you yourself have (aptly) cited in terms of The Great Illusion, it’s not enough to stop people from pulling the trigger on hot conflicts. We have our own experiences and touchstones.
Mine is having tons of people telling me how smart Putin was and how it was impossible he was going to invade. It was all a clever negotiating tactic, and much of the influence campaigns were in order to bring Ukraine closer. Besides that, Putin and his close associates enjoyed Western society too much, were too urbane, and relied too much on Western trade in continuing to improve/modernize the Russian economy. The Russian elite were surprisingly accessible for many people, including Putin himself. I couldn’t speak from personal experience with him, but a lot of people could. Obviously, unhappily, my sense that a lot of the moves seemed too real was right, and theirs in reading the incentives was wrong.
The scale is different here, though at the same time the stakes are higher (Ukraine is a relatively not-that-strategically important strip of land vs Taiwan’s place in the island chain). Regardless, I don’t really think rationality plays much of a role in these decisions—if they did, neither WWI or Ukraine or a lot of other conflicts would have ever happened.
In any case, I do generally hope you and other optimists are right. I used to be the most worried about Taiwan among anyone I knew—though now some mainstream folks have sprinted past me in their probability estimates of disaster. Still, I still worry a lot about it, and think it’s far from impossible or a vanishingly small probability.
We can agree to disagree on this issue. The important part is to have an open, frank, and respectful discussion about the merits. Your perspective is valuable and appreciated.
To your point, the DPP has become quite radical. Unfortunately in the 2024 presidential election, the TPP and KMT split the vote, otherwise Taipei would have a more rational government at this point and your business would not be suffering under the poor governance of the Lai administration. The total failure of the Great Recall, contrary to all predictions by the pan-Green side, does indicate that there has been a real shift in public opinion away from the DPP. This bodes well for future cross-strait relations.
Geopolitics expert John Mearsheimer has written about the root causes of the Ukraine war: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/who-caused-the-ukraine-war (This post is quite enlightening and worth reading in its entirety.)
"The principal cause of the conflict is the NATO decision to bring Ukraine into the alliance, which virtually all Russian leaders see as an existential threat that must be eliminated. NATO expansion, however, is part of a broader strategy that is designed to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. Bringing Kyiv into the European Union (EU) and promoting a color revolution in Ukraine – turning it into pro-Western liberal democracy – are the other two prongs of the policy. Russia leaders fear all three prongs, but they fear NATO expansion the most. To deal with this threat, Russia launched a preventive war on 24 February 2022."
Mearsheimer outlines that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was in fact a rational response to continued NATO expansion, as Moscow's diplomatic efforts to prevent the West from doing this over past few decades had failed: "Russia has always seen Ukraine in NATO as an existential threat that must be prevented at all costs. That logic is the driving force behind the Ukraine war."
The primary miscalculation leading up to the Ukraine war seems to have been the West's underestimation of the strength of the Russian military: "Probably the best evidence that Putin was not seen as a serious threat during his first fourteen years in office is that he was an invited guest at the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, which is where the alliance announced that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become members. Putin, of course, was enraged by that decision and made his anger known. But his opposition to that announcement had hardly any effect on Washington because Russia’s military was judged to be too weak to stop further NATO enlargement, just as it had been too weak to stop the 1999 and 2004 waves of expansion. The West thought it could once again shove NATO expansion down Russia’s throat."
This led directly to Putin's biggest fear: "President Biden, who moved into the White House in January 2021, had long been committed to bringing Ukraine into NATO and was a super-hawk toward Russia. Unsurprisingly, on 14 June 2021, NATO issued a communiqué at its annual summit in Brussels, which said: “We reiterate the decision made at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance.”"
The West today will not underestimate China the way it underestimated Russia in 2021-22 and continually push China's red lines the way it did with Russia. In fact, Trump blocked Taiwan President Lai from stopping in the US: https://apnews.com/article/taiwan-china-trump-lai-f8bae1421f9d55e240a50671e14ec23f
While the post Why China Won't Invade Taiwan presents an optimistic outlook, the optimism is based on a pragmatic assessment of Beijing's existing position, as well as the clear differences with this situation compared to other geopolitical conflicts around the world.
Agreed, I think I commented about your original piece that your argument is better than most of the ones I come across on the topic (and I like your citation of The Great Illusion)!
We have the same data, but come to different conclusions. It’s just the nature of these things. And here’s to hoping you’re right!
The PLA buildup and drills are addressed in the post:
"So, the possibility of invasion, the military drills, the missile tests, and the probing of Taiwan's Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) are less about an imminent D-Day and more about maintaining a proverbial Sword of Damocles over Taipei.
Beijing will undoubtedly continue to sharpen this sword to motivate a greater willingness for Taipei to come to the negotiating table. But Beijing is also acutely aware that if that sword were to actually fall, the consequences for the PRC itself could be catastrophic."
While Beijing sees Taiwan as part of its territory, the fact that its top goal is peaceful reunification indicates that the status quo is still a reality that must be overcome.
Here's the way Beijing seeks to do so: "Peaceful cross-Straits relations and integrated development pave the way for reunification and serve to benefit our people on both sides." http://www.scio.gov.cn/zfbps/ndhf/2022n/202304/t20230407_710482_m.html
Beijing has made it clear that it is willing to negotiate with Taipei under the One China policy and 1992 Consensus: "We are ready to engage with all parties, groups, or individuals in Taiwan in a broad exchange of views aimed at resolving the political differences between the two sides based on the one-China principle and the 1992 Consensus."
While it may be true that the cost of crisis rises faster for the West than China, this post is primarily making the case that the cost of crisis is very high for China.
The fact of the matter is that negotiation not only an option for Taiwan but the vastly preferable option for Beijing as well.
In April 2024, President Xi told former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou (translated): "People on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are all Chinese. There are no knots in our hearts that cannot be untied. There are no problems that cannot be discussed. There is no force that can separate us."
Thus, there really is no need for Taiwan to be concerned. All they need to do to eliminate any chance of conflict is to be willing to accept the One China policy and 1992 consensus. With this framework, there were official relations between Beijing and Taipei under President Ma Ying-jeou (2008-16) and even a meeting between President Xi and Ma in Singapore in 2015.
I am not a China expert (though I did spend over a year working there). My best source of information about Chinese politics is a good friend who's a Chinese national, who follows Chinese politics closely.
He told me a couple years ago that Xi Jinping, in order to secure his third term, essentially made a promise that he would "solve the Taiwan problem" before the end of his term (2027).
My searches for any confirmation of this in Western sources came up blank (Claude didn't exactly call me a liar, but...). However, when I asked Claude to help me search in Mandarin sources, this is what it came up with:
---
A Voice of America Chinese analysis from October 2022 noted that observers have commented that Xi Jinping has been using the slogan of "solving the Taiwan problem or achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation" to suppress internal opposition and maintain his hold on power during his bid for re-election. (https://www.voachinese.com/a/xi-jinping-wins-his-third-terms-which-analysts-worry-will-lead-china-into-turmoil-20221023/6802023.html)
A September 2023 VOA Chinese report stated that Taiwan's Defense Ministry report indicated that "Xi Jinping is very likely to promote solving the Taiwan issue during his third term." (https://www.voachinese.com/a/will-the-ccp-be-able-to-solve-the-taiwan-issue-during-xi-jinping-s-third-term-20230909/7261302.html)
The Chinese-language reporting does connect Xi's third term ambitions more directly to Taiwan than I found in English sources. The analysis suggests that Xi has indeed used Taiwan unification as a political tool to justify his unprecedented third term, even if he hasn't made an explicit "5-year promise."
---
So, regardless of whether Xi made an explicit promise, he apparently has been using "solving the Taiwan problem" as a political tool. And that suggests that regardless of the external situation, he may face pressure to take a more aggressive stance in order to hold off internal opposition.
In short, the external factors weighing against invasion may have limited impact if the internal pressures to keep his promise are strong enough. And I'm not sure any of us in the West have a good enough view of those internal pressures to be able to predict with any confidence how Xi will act.
Respectfully disagree. The post outlines in detail the several disincentives for China's use of a military solution to solve the Taiwan problem.
VOA is fully funded by the US government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America
Reading VOA reporting to understand Chinese policy is the functional equivalent of reading China Daily, Global Times, or RT to learn about US policy.