Japan &/ US, if they can't avoid it, even w/o any civ. population there.
No, when China takes Taiwan, it's over. If these forces couldn't prevent a Chinese invasion, they don't have a ghost of a chance to retake it. I think you have reality confused with a board game; in the real world, the US understands the consquences of a peer-level fight and it avoids it everywhere. America will only fight small defenseless nations.
FYI, Germany & Japan lost some Pacific islands forever.
And once China takes Taiwan, that will be forever as well.
the Great Wall helped, but didn't save them from Mongols & Manchus.
They can even move some more mountains to make valleys as they've done, & build a tunnel to Taiwan, before filling the strait with earth, but a determined group of nations will find the means to overcome PRC there,
There is no such determined group of nations. It's the US desperate to stay on top despite watching China's rise, and everyone else who just doesn't want to be on the losing side of WWIII.
the same way as China would fight to prevent/retake Sri Lanka if India tries to take/takes it by force.
I have not heard of this Chinese desire. You really just imagine fights out of thin air.
failing that, they can take the Nicobars to prevent India's threat to that chokepoint.
Imaginary conflict with an imaginary desire but in reality, India's the one who fails at everything, not China.
Instead of rocking the boat, IMO China should leave Taiwan alone.
That's why your opinion is so worthless to the Chinese. You can give up whatever you own but we will not. You don't understand China and you don't even understand the psychology behind war. You imagine conflicts that have almost no chance of starting and you underestimate China's determination. Nothing in your analysis is right because you never had the necessary components to undertake the project in the first place.
W/o Western markets, her economy will suffer, just like during the Cold War, if not worse.
No, without China's exports, Western nations will suffer. In the end, they pay artificial money for real Chinese goods that make their nations run and allow their people to live lazy lives.
Will the CCP hold on to power after their house of cards built on foreign trade collapses?
Of course; that house of cards is the guest house. China's mansion is built on China's domestic economy. China's economy is mostly self-consumption, and with the high of taking the ROC, the Chinese people's support of the CCP will be at a historical high. Meanwhile, in the West, everyone will bitch and moan and start bloody riots because they see their quality of live decreasing without Chinese goods. There are so many people already living paycheck to paycheck eagerly waiting for government support and then they find out that over an island they don't care about, their government just broke their only ways of barely making ends meet. Ohhhh if you thought the BLM riots were nasty.... LOL
