in a universe in which this is a good point (to be clear: not the one we live in), why would you need terrorists when you can blow your own stuff up and say it was terrorists

I dont have enough tinfoil readily available to go down this path. Regardless, the point is geopolitics is a little more complicated than just decrying a state actor as "evil" for who they do business with, especially if not doing business with that person would severely negatively impact them.

yeah i don't think china looks at it much further than "we have products to make and people to sell it to"

fwiw china was a much bigger partner to ukraine than the USA was pre-war

ukraine was a major focal point of the belt and road initiative and china had been pouring investment into the country to improve its logistics infrastructure - i was last in kyiv in 2019 and remember the uber driver talking nonstop about how nice the new highway was that the Chinese built for them and made his airport runs much faster - these are things you hear a lot when traveling in areas outside the US orbit, people here i flew in from china and immediately tell me about all the cool stuff china has built in their country

ukraine was also a major trading partner with china

i wouldn't disagree that they are selling things to russia that aid them in the war, but i would strongly disagree that china is onboard with the war and i think it's a safe assumption that if it were up to them and putin asked xi for permission then xi would have said no

this feels like standard pragmatism for them, well that sucks that all our investments in ukraine are now kaput but as a silver lining there's now a robust market in drones and microchips for us

Not too long ago there was a picture of a Chinese trade fair where they had aisles marked "Drones for Ukraine" and "Drones for Russia".




In other ways China is taking advantage of Russia as much as possible at the moment, they are not traditional allies at all. If anything China is trying to get it to where Russia is essentially a vassal. They have extremely different long term goals, and while some of their short term goals might line up now, those long term goals are what really matters.

yeah the ussr absolutely exploited the f out of china during their "partnership" era

pre ww2, manchuria was the industrial center of asia, it was near a lot of resources needed for heavy industry and thus became an area where a steel mill, tractor factory, etc would all be located - hence why it was the top priority for Japan to take and they took it many years before bothering to try getting more of China

as most of the fighting took place in other areas, the factories were all still largely undamaged and intact when the soviets occupied manchuria with little Japanese resistance

prior to handing back the territory to the Chinese, they literally dismantled all the factories, loaded them up on railcars and shipped them back to Russia to be re-assembled back there

it completely transformed manchuria from one of the wealthiest and most developed areas in Asia to one of the most impoverished overnight

the USSR also took that opportunity to also take some physical land out in the frontier in addition taking over the northern portion of Mongolia which was a traditional Chinese territory/vassal state - hence why there are two Mongolias today, Inner Mongolia which is part of China and Outer Mongolia which is the country of Mongolia

the USSR also held onto the city of Dalian for an additional 5 years before handing that back because they wanted a warm water port on the pacific

normally, this would be viewed as a foreign occupation more than a liberation but Mao's hands were tied, he was in the middle of a civil war of his own, it wasn't clear if he'd win without continued Soviet support so they didn't have much other choice than to grin and bear it

then after mao won the war, they found themselves without any allies as they were the dirty communists so they again needed to rely upon the soviets to get back on their feet, as usually happens in communist revolutions, the doctors and engineers all flee or are killed in the initial class wars and then when it comes time to perform heart surgery or build a bridge you're out of luck because you got nothing but peasants, so they relied heavily on soviet experts to bridge the gap until they could train a new generation of experts of their own - the price for this was heavy, even during famine they were still exporting food to the USSR as payment for the experts and loans needed to rebuild

once they finally got self sufficient again, the first thing they did was do away with the russians, they kicked all russians out of china, and they even had a hot war with them over the border that lasted 7 months

mao literally build a man made range of hills in between Mongolia and Beijing to take away the threat of russian tanks blitzkrieging Beijing and enforcing regime change before they even had a chance to mobilize their own forces

this would be the catalyst for the USA believing that China could now be our ally and it began ping pong diplomacy where we idiotically didn't ask for very much in return - we were so smugly confident that if we got them to open markets then they'd become democratic and that's the primary goal so in order to get that done we gave up a ton always thinking it would just be short term pain that would reap rewards once their government collapsed and got replaced by a democratically elected ally

so china historically views the USA far more favorably than Russia, Russia to this day still occupies territory that historically belonged to China previously

the idea that russia and china are going to be allies is farcical and based on ill informed nonsense "those guys are both bad therefore they'll be allies"

India is a far more likely ally of Russia than China - not saying that it is likely but they are also not engaging in sanctions and buying their oil and selling them stuff as well

Didn't read any of this thread, but need to know why it's not called "Gina".

I feel like if Taiwan declares independence they would very much like Russia tp to **** around and invade a NATO state so they can have a shot at pulling off taking Taiwan.

i don't forsee them invading

remember, they are doing it as brothers and liberators

taiwan is one of the most highly militarized states in the world, their entire country is a bunker system - that's not speaking figuratively

most buildings have shelters in them, there's bunkers and hidden supply caches stored all other the place, every single highway on the island is built with designs that allow them to convert it into a makeshift airport on the fly (so china can't just bomb the airports and take out the airforce) and also be able to be destroyed on a whim so in the event the mainlanders are moving in that direction, they can take the highway network off the board and now they'll struggle to move anything

lots of highways are elevated, this is specifically because a few well placed charges will not only get it to collapse but also collapse in a way that block the ground level roads with rubble as well




they are very wealthy and under constant threat and thus have planned accordingly



once you leave the coast, the interior is all 12,000' peak mountains

take the colorado rockies and transplant them to an island and you have taiwan





there's absolutely no way to blitzkrieg taiwan and enact regime change

they are an island, they have one of the best and most advanced airforce, rocket armament, they have one of the most powerful navies on earth, they are considered to have the 12th most powerful navy on the planet

so there's no simple landing, you can't simply send over landing craft or airdrop troops in - there would be a major conflict

taiwan's navy and airforce would eventually fold if china threw everything they had at them, but the process of doing that would take tremendous toll on the local population (not to mention the cost to china both financially in paying for it + sanctions & in their own lives) and be slow enough that once they do get their armies on the island, they are now facing hundreds of hidden mountain bunkers and will need to rebuild all the roads in order to move their tanks and equipment and coordinate to attack


yes, china could do it, but whereas Ukraine is a flat steppe that didn't have much of a military and is very poor and you can see how much russia struggles - imagine now ukraine is an island, nothing but 10' elevation mountains, and has one of the biggest and most advanced military in the world and is a literal bunker system

china can't take taiwan without utterly destroying the island - now anything can happen, but the odds of them deciding that's worth it is basically zero

remember, this is "liberation of their people" not attacking a foreign enemy

tellingly, taiwan doesn't exist as a name, it's a rhetorical trick we use to avoid confusion and not wanting to say "republic of china" and "people's republic of china"

they are china as well, their passports say republic of china, their official documents and government notices say republic of china - so there is a realistic world in which they one day peaceably unite - it may not be in our lifetime, but I'm sure it will eventually happen - each year they grow closer in ties and many taiwanese live in China and vice versa - every single company i worked with in Beijing had multiple colleagues from Taiwan - not executives and investors but regular people who decided to move to the mainland for better job opportunities and since the prc also considers them to be their citizens, they don't require visas and are given a placeholder Chinese id upon arrival in lieu of using their passport - people from both sides interact all the time, they are huge trading partners, most taiwanese businesses have a china office and vice versa, I've been to taipei many times because of work trips where I'd go visit the other office there or there was some kind of event going on

just a few years ago you couldn't even send mail, book direct flights, nor make a phone call between the two places - so this progress is rapid and mostly on the heels of economics


taiwanese do consider themselves Chinese, polling says they're favorable to unifying under the right terms, the matter is just about trust and terms, they are incredibly wealthy and have a good thing going and don't want to mess that up bringing in a wild card of unification so while most are open to the idea, they prefer the status quo for now

there's also good precedent with hong kong and Macau showing that not much has changed for them since unification - yes they don't have that much autonomy, but they never did beforehand, instead of having british and portugese people running the place it's now their own countrymen

USA war games N Korea attacking S Korea at the same time as China invades Taiwan for that reason. They might update to include Russia as well, or they could even be doing it already, it's not just known.

Really grim look at China and Taiwan:

https://warontherocks.com/2024/04/ch...m-over-taiwan/

interesting, thanks for sharing

the guy definitely has credentials, recently retired rear admiral in charge of intelligence

but he has also been going on about the Chinese threat for a while, his 1996 thesis was called dragon in the shadows

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA313771


some notes

he seems to treat china's stance towards taiwan as new

this is not new in the slightest, china has been maintaining and improving upon a taiwan invasion force since 1949 when they consolidated control over the mainland

he's also ignoring that Xi is by far the most outwardly friendly PRC leader to Taiwan, he's the only one in their entire history who agreed to have a meeting with the Taiwanese leader
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%E2%80%93Xi_meeting



but back to the main thing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait_relations

you can see in the wiki there was still a hot war between china and the remnants of the ROC up through 1955, a full 6 years after most consider the civil war to have been over - all that fighting was over various islands, some of which are still part of Taiwan today whereas others are now under the PRC

the prc would have undoubtedly taken Taiwan if not for the fact the USA intervened in 1950, at that point, China held off on Taiwan proper and began focusing on the smaller islands closer to the mainland proper

it was only in 1955 that the US passed a congressional resolution to also defend those minor islands that we also intervened there as well, forcing the PLA and ROC to agree to a cease fire

there was a second taiwan straits crisis of a hot war happening, mostly in the form of artillery shelling but this was diplomatically resolved after a few months

it was only when foreign governments began to stop officially recognizing the ROC as the legitimate government of China did China begin to acknowledge there was room for a peaceful unification

however, China is a big believer in the speak softly but carry a big stick approach and has always maintained a dedicated force ready to shell, airstrike, blockade, & send landing craft to the island - they have always felt that even if it never gets used, not having that capability removes diplomatic options - so i find it very strange that the author treats that like a new development when it's always been that way




the rest, i mean it feels like a bunch of unsubstantiated and unsupported things - stuff like like we lack context here - what does he define as taiwan related experience, how does that current makeup compare to previous makeup, wouldn't the thawing of relations and ramped up interactions between china and taiwan mean that more prominent officials now have experience with taiwan than in the past when they didn't talk to each other?

he also leaves out the fact that the real power is in the standing committee not the general politburo

he leaves out the fact that Xi Jinping's power base is from the part of China directly opposite Taiwan and he's brought those people from his early days up with him, as they would have been geographically linked to that area and probably more likely to have some kind of taiwan connection as a result
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zhijiang_Army

he also pretends like skipping the central committee is a weird thing when it's pretty standard for xi's playbook of quickly elevating his people, i started checking current politburo members of the first 6 or 7 i checked, 3 of them all skipped the central committee so i stopped checking at that point


he then points to china wanting to improve and modernize their military is a sure sign they are preparing for war - wholly leaving out that we do the exact same thing, only to a much greater extent

says they've moved military forces closer to taiwan without specifying what - all the while ignoring that the brunt of china's military has always been stationed directly across the straits from taiwan and that's nothing new


talks about a law to nationalize all foreign assets in times of war - this is admittedly a huge red flag, something i hadn't known about and while not an uncommon practice, feels odd to prepare for that to run smoothly by codifying it into existence so there's a clear mechanism under which it'll be carried out when the time comes - this is massive and is the real smoking gun that the author should have focused upon instead of leaving it as a one off

similarly, dropping the phrase peaceful unification from official rhetoric is troubling, but alas could just be some gamesmanship idk what to think of it

says china having a strategic petroleum reserve means they are preparing for an invasion, yet oddly doesn't think that America is up to no good with their oil reserve which is 714 million barrels compared to China's 500 million barrels in 2009 the us has enough oil for 60 days, china for 90 days


it's lines like this that really make me think he's a quack though
are these not things all leaders should be genuinely doing? would we disaprove if our country didn't protect supply chains, have cyber security, protect our critical infrastructure and reduce our exposure the currency of another nation?

this i find just insulting
we're not talking about a one off missile strike in libya, we're talking an event that'll be a major war, biggest event of the decade if not the century, and something that could possibly spiral into wwwiii

more nonsense, something we've heard about every Chinese leader for decades (with a few years left perhaps Mao/Deng/Hu/Jiang/etc will make a move to secure Taiwan and their legacy)
it's an interesting read and I'm glad you shared it, but he offers little to no evidence, it's all hearsay and speculation

i do respect the man and the office he comes from, hence why I'm not dismissing it out of hand and read it carefully, but to me this does feel like this is a bid to start a political career

Regarding his credentials and stances:

I've only read the abstract of his thesis that you linked, but it seems pretty much correct to me: "resource competition will most likely spark future violence in the South China Sea [...] suggest China will strive to avoid or contain a conflict over the near term."This isn't fear mongering for 25 years claiming that China invades tomorrow. What his abstract claims is largely what we've seen: China has not escalated to the point of an outright war, but has become increasingly aggressive. They contest shipping lanes, use water cannons on Filipino ships, are creating artificial islands, building military bases where Xi promised he would not, encroaching on Taiwanese airspace at an alarming rate, performing months long Taiwan invasion practice drills, and more.

Some of the tone might have come off a bit strange because of a lack of context. This is a paper largely in response to the hope that the Russia Ukraine war would set China back decades in attempting to invade Taiwan, or even convince them not to attempt it at all. Specifically the West uniting to sanction Russia and Ukraine's ability to drive Russia out of the Black Sea without having a navy were believed to be huge deterrents. Some of the stuff he mentions isn't to say it's new and alarming, it is to say that if China were set back significantly, or even reconsidering an invasion, then we would see these things changing but they are still happening.




I didn't follow the relevance of this part, can you expand on it:








The argument being made now is that China has drastically increased their modernization efforts, particularly things like nuclear capabilities and high tech missiles. This suggests they are preparing to deter or engage with a modern military. These would largely be unnecessary if they were going to engage is small scale exertions of power as they've been doing.





Others have mentioned that this was a direct response to sanctions crippling Russia's economy. I agree I wish he had gone over it more. The scale that this is happening is key.







I think the "wag the dog" part is far fetched, but possible if the economy were really suffering long term. I think that Xi's age is a major factor however. I think it was a major factor in Putin invading, and is always going to matter with forever leaders. For better or worse, spelling out the absolute most fearful scenario is part of the job and we have to take that into account, but I think what he says should be alarming. If there is any chance that Xi does want his legacy to be the leader that unified Taiwan (similar to how Putin wanted to retake Ukraine) then he's got to get moving sooner rather than later.

yeah i too only read the abstract, i also didn't mean to mislead, i agree with it in general as well, i do however feel like it's relevant that this guy has been focused on the china threat since he was a junior officer


oh this does explain a lot, if the spirit of it was countering thoughts that "no way China would invade taiwan after seeing what russia faces" - that i wholly agree with, I don't think for a million years that China would ever casually invade and then be surprised that there are major economic and diplomatic (if not a wider expanding hot war itself) if they did it - unlike ukraine, Taiwan has a defense pact with the US, we're obligated to defend them so it wouldn't be as simple a decision as we had with ukraine where the option to sit it out and send aid came so consequence free - if china took taiwan and we failed to join the fray in any direct capacity, it would severely hurt our relations with all of our other satellite states where he has heavy military presences




Xi began rising to power in Zhejiang province, which although not directly across the straits from Taiwan, is just north of that, as is usual, as he rose in rank, he in turn promoted people who he had formed friendships with and trusted over positions which he had influence in which would have been in Zhejiang or neighboring provinces

anyone in the central government who would have had a lot to do with taiwan, especially militarily, would very likely be posted in that region, so people manning those positions were either ones he'd have been in close contact with to befriend in the first place, or were in those positions because he appointed them there

our author never defined what he meant by "some politburo members have experience with taiwan" so it's hard to say what he's driving at there, but given that is where Xi rose to power and that he's stacked the politburo with his people, it would seem like a standard distribution to me

but furthermore, i don't really see the relevance, the politburo itself is more of an advisory board and a place where future leaders are groomed - the real power is in the standing committee, but even so, it's widely speculated that Xi is the first leader since Mao (or possibly Deng) who is not beholden to the standing committee and can act unilaterally - all of his predecessors acted more as the public face of the standing committee whereas Xi is the first one in ages who is truly the person behind the wheel

so if he wants to invade taiwan, he doesn't need to put people with taiwan experience on the politburo, he can just summon the relevant experts he needs to a meeting, say they are now on the taiwan committee and that is that - he doesn't need any of them on the politburo whatsoever, and if we are to believe he's truly the one man in charge anyway, he'd probably prefer the people running that operation wouldn't be so highly elevated anyway as then they pose less of a coup threat if they have resounding success and it's easier for him to distance himself from it if it's a failure



ahh, that context does change things I'll agree, china's military has historically been focused on cost effective local conflict type things

i still think that was largely economically driven, ie they chose to be dominant local player than a weak international one and that perhaps they now have the budget to pursue both

i remember there anti air craft missiles were considered big news and got a lot of negative press, as an American, i obviously don't like the idea of china being able to sink an air craft carrier with a single missile (there's still a lot of speculation over whether or not the aircraft carrier would be able to dodge, shoot down, or deflect the missile in a real situation because they've only been used taking out drones thus far) but nonetheless, i totally get how it's a reasonable weapon for them to develop and it'd be stupid not to, you have another country regularly parading aircraft carrier groups near your borders to threaten and intimidate you - you know you have no chance whatsoever to compete in an aircraft carrier race with them, so you seek out a simple and cheap weapon that'll just make them useless instead

but yeah, i agree with your point, but definitely don't feel like an American who's military has spent more than all other militaries combined during our lifetimes (we no longer keep up that pace due to BRICs rapidly catching up) is in a good position to criticize another country's military buildup

yeah i agree it's not a good look, but at the same time, if we had critical infrastructure that could be disabled by a foreign country on a whim, our president would face tremendous political pressure domestically if he did not fix that and address that

one of the core tenets of American policy is to always be self sufficient so we can never be blackmailed/threatened like that so even though we're not doing it for nefarious reasons, we still do it because other nefarious nations could otherwise take advantage

yeah I'm with you somewhat but putin also took crimea with ease

had the us and Europe not intervened, the rest of ukraine would have become a russian province long ago, i don't think for a second he would have gone in if he had any clue as to the amount of support we were willing to give them

even the day before the invasion, biden made a speech that said our response would be sanctions - to which putin probably thought "hey that's not so bad"

Awesome, thanks for the insights. Just out of curiosity, how and why do you know so much about Xi and the inner workings of the politics there?

I think that your point about it being natural for Xi to hire people from that area of the country, who also happen to have experience with Taiwan, can be extrapolated to many areas of the article. It's difficult to tell how much of this is alarming because it could mean they have plans for Taiwan and how much of this just coincides with China and Xi's circumstances. Obviously the guy whose job is to assess China's threat in an effort to prepare is going to look at every bit of evidence and say it's evidence of China preparing for war, it's pretty much his job.







Unrelated, but here's an interesting article on Tik Tok:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/b...-congress.html

beijing tends to attract the diplomatic/journalist/academic crew of expats - so a lot of the people writing briefs and docs on people like Xi for their governments back home are all in Beijing, so as a result you tend to just often be drinking/surrounded amongst various people who would drunkenly talk Chinese policy at the bar etc etc

I've traveled and lived in other parts of china and the expats in other areas are just totally different - distinctly remember going to Shanghai, meeting up with a friend and his social crew, they knew i'd been living in Beijing for a while, they were still blown away that I could order food in Chinese which felt crazy to me because literally everyone in Beijing would get pretty good at the language pretty quickly and i knew people in shanghai who didn't even know how to ask for a beer in Chinese


as i was a journalist there in my early years and sometimes moonlight helping research projects for various institutions (ie someone wants to know a timeline for when China will have 3G networks nationwide, I'd be the person to try to figure that out)

i was probably one of the first 1,000 Americans to know about his existence, i had worked on various reports concerning Hu Jintao's likely successor and the consensus was it would be him but he'd have to fend off another rising star in Bo Xilai (I actually thought it would be Bo because he was a populist who was insanely popular wherever he was in office and really just seemed to crush everything he did - like he took down the Chinese mafia in Chongqing, which had previously been massively powerful, Chongqing was always known as a mafia city, whereas Xi was more reserved and measured - but everyone else had correctly deduced the boring guy would win because he more fit the mold of how a leader should act)

i'd probably say in 2006 odds were Xi Jinping 70%, Bo Xilai 25%, some rando perhaps 5%

they knew without a doubt that it was very unlikely for both to go on having big careers because the winner would likely purge the loser and sure enough once Xi became the official heir apparent things quickly went sour for Bo Xilai - which if you're unfamiliar with is a fascinating read that includes the murder of a British expat - but tldr he's now in jail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Lijun_incident


i also read mostly non fiction and often find myself in the Wikipedia tunnel where i start reading something about Xi Jinping and then 5 hours later I'm reading about obscure things that happened in the cultural revolution




main thing about Chinese politics is nothing on paper matters for much of anything and this is a massive influence on my understanding and interpretation of what is happening - i go in with the thought that "we have absolutely no idea who is really making what decisions and what is announced publicly is not necessarily what is actually happening"

ie last few presidents Hu and Jiang were seen as more of spokesman for a clique of powerful people, they were not even necessarily the most powerful person in the clique - Xi is different, he's the first people since Mao where it's unquestioned that he's the real person in power - and not just white people say this, Chinese will say this openly as well



i think the best book to read to really understand the tribal nature of Chinese government is Mao the Untold Story


it's got a ton of issues, probably at best 80% accurate

they didn't source any of their information - they do have a list of sources which is from reading declassified soviet archives and "interview with anon" at the end so it's plausible their research is good but they also write a lot of stuff that there's no way they could have known - like they give Mao's personal thoughts and feelings and motives behind doing certain things and it's like "wtf how would you know"

but it's an absolutely engrossing and mind blowing book that really makes you say wow while reading it because it's not the boring and sanitized version of history of "they went to yan'an and setup a base and there Mao rose to be undisputed leader" it's instead "they went to yan'an and threw a lot of dance parties and mao loved to dance with the ladies and they also grew poppies to process into opium to help pay for the war and this is how mao systematically took down rival a, this is how he tricked rival b, this is how he sent rival c on a mission where he'd surely die and he did"

it's just amazing to read, strongly, strongly rec it

You don't think having actual terrorists would be better?

Thanks for the book recommendation. I feel like I might own that book, but then again just about every book about Mao has a similar style cover, so I might. I'll check next time I'm back in the states.

The expat communities vary an insane amount. Where I was living it was a mix of people who got really good at Mandarin an then people who had been there for 15 years and couldn't have a basic conversation. I never understood it. I would be pretty shocked if anyone in my area knew much about politics or recent history, which is why I asked how you got into it. That makes about the Beijing community being far more into it.

Total aside, but I was recently at a beach town in Vietnam and was talking to some people. One of them mentioned that he was in Beijing when Tiananmen Square happened, it was pretty interesting to talk to him.


I heard very mixed things about Bo Xilai and the crackdown. I read from some sources that they threw the underground world out of Chongqing, but also read that they threw the underground world out of Chongqing... and then turned around and set up shop.

I remember the tea poisoning, really crazy story. Kind of a similar story with the Three Body Problem which happened recently.

Anyways I'll look for that book, thanks for the insights.

yeah like consider how everyone agrees that deng xiaoping was the guy running the show after mao, and yet he was never the president/chairman etc so there's a big tradition of the real people in power not necessarily wanting any titles or office and they instead nominate someone else to take on that role

yeah it's hard to say about the Chongqing stuff, it's very likely they just replaced the mafia with themselves which I'm sure without a doubt happened on some level, but they also needed to take this guy out and make sure he could never challenge xi for power - tellingly, Bo's problems only began once Xi was officially named the successor and you knew he was toast because he wasn't even promoted in that congress as he normally was

ie if you look at the history of roman emperors, it's basically 100% accurate that those we viewed as good emperors were succeeded by an ally whereas those who were considered bad emperors were succeeded by the person who killed them because the successor controlled the narrative



one thing that's really interesting about the book that i forgot to mention is it diverges from the accepted history of mao significantly - which is why it's so controversial that their citation method is just put a list of sources at the end instead of citing individual things (which i understand from a readability standpoint) but a lot of the stuff is based on "trust me bro"

ie to my knowledge this is only place where you'll read they sold opium to pay for the war, that mao disobeyed orders, tricked a group into believing that he was in control and commandeered an army which is how he rapidly rose from obscure to a major player, that a lot of the starvation during the great leap forward was due to china exporting all the food they could to the rest of the soviet bloc in order to pay for the industrial equipment they were receiving back as Mao prioritized China being self sufficient militarily over "short term famine" - ie as he saw it, if they couldn't build their own tanks/airforce then they'd forever be under the yoke of either the USA or USSR

The main point is any military action against Taiwan is a political suicide and completely unnecessary for what they are trying to achieve regardless.

The end goal was for Taiwan to serve as a stronghold to exert influence on nearby "unfriendly" nations and acquiring additional economic power.

Given Taiwan's advanced semiconductor/electronics industry it's very easy to transition to military drone-building and China clearly took in account the events in the Black Sea in terms of how easy it's to min-max naval supremacy with cheap ass 50k drones/unmanned boats. Given the necessary amount of natural resources been stockpiled for that matter in advance.

In addition to that they've also learnt that even a "cheap victory" over HK brought years of economic struggles for this territory and a very negative emigration trend, combined with money outflow from international investments. In case of Taiwan that can be amplified by 15-20x. It's not something they will aspire to do for "perceived gains" at this moment. Status quo will last another 10-20 years and most likely be "resolved" on economic grounds.

You assign a far greater strategic motive for retaking Taiwan than I do. I think that the strategic position for controlling the Pacific is secondary to reuniting "One China". For the "One China" principle, military is the only means of achieving their goals. After seeing what has happened to HK, Taiwan is unlikely to ever join China willingly.

I was hoping that what has happened with drones and the Black Sea Fleet would cause China to pause for a significant amount of time, but so far that doesn't seem to be the case. It is possible that China believes they can overcome drones somehow. Drones will be less effective on the ocean as they were in the Black Sea, and also China's fleet won't be loitering around like Russia's, if they think they have enough advanced EW to get a few landings in that could be enough.

I believe China will be willing to wait out any economic hardships.

Just purely my opinion but the whole "One China" narrative is just a slogan for internal population political consumption. For external use it just describes a concept of what they ultimately would like to achieve in terms of foreign policy.

People up top almost always base the rationale of their decisions with more tangible logic. And lots of real world factors come in to play. CCP is never gonna act like "fanatics", especially against their own people. Ultimately all they want is de facto "control" over the territory on a broader scale. Can be compared to parents fighting for custody of children and who gets to make "significant life decisions", using legal language.

HK was completely different since it doesn't have any army, infantile/docile population, land border with mainland and all in all just integrated to the whole economic system on various levels. Hence the "gamble" of such decisions, was a very easy one to take, since chances of extreme violence or death on any side was minimal.

Taiwan is a whole different story and no one in their right mind is willing to give an order to attack own population and destroy it's infrastructure. Since unless a mutually acceptable settlement can be reached, there're guaranteed deaths from both sides and other unpredictable consequences. That will send major waves of political backlash not just amongst Chinese population around the world but in every other area. And Chinese value stability more than anything else in the world.

They will bluff their way through this situation as much as possible for years until they slowly chip away things one by one. Can be compared to minor shareholder buying stock slowly by few % each year until ending up the majority shareholder.