I posted this in r/Sino under the title "Some thoughts on the Taiwan situation":
I understand people here are rubbed raw by the current situation. I certainly count myself among that number - on an emotional level, I would have loved nothing more than to see Nancy Pelosi plummet to her death in a fireball - but there's something far more important than momentary emotional release: victory. What the yawping chimpanzees on this site (hi, lurker) and other Western social media don't and can't ever understand is that victory encompasses more than victory on Twitter and Reddit. With that in mind, let's take a look at the stakes China is playing for and what it stands to win.
Today China is able to defeat the US in a localized, high-intensity war within the First Island Chain. This wasn't the case even a decade ago and certainly not during the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1996; the PLA today is unrecognizable from what it used to be a quarter century ago. But there is still much to be done even with all the progress that has been made - China still can't achieve a decisive victory over the US throughout the western Pacific in places like Guam and Hawaii. To strengthen the PLA to that degree will require at least the remainder of this decade and very likely well into the next. Not only that, but China's various self-sufficiency drives in sectors like semiconductors and energy will have borne fruit by then - today a quarter of all new cars sold in China are electric, how do you think an oil blockade will function when the vast majority of cars on Chinese roads are electric? Similarly, what does TSMC or any other company matter to China when it can produce the world's most advanced chips for itself?
Any serious examination of the present geopolitical situation will invariably lead one to conclude that the longer China can defer a war with the United States, the better. Conversely, the sooner the US can bring about a war with China, the better its chances of derailing China's rise. Given this, it is of paramount importance not to overreact to any US provocation like the clown Pelosi taking her circus to Taiwan. Shooting her out of the sky - satisfying as that would be - is handing the US the pretext it needs on a silver platter. China's response to her provocation is already playing out - China has announced the largest scale exercises in decades and will include military activities in Taiwan's "territorial" waters. This is a very important step, especially if repeated, as it would normalize PLA activity in what was heretofore accepted as Taiwanese "territory". There are other things China can do along this line if it has a flair for the dramatic, like flying aircraft over Taiwan itself. If you want to get really nutty, China can detonate a nuclear weapon near Taiwan (far enough not to cause physical damage, near enough to be seen and make a point).
However, what China will not do is provoke a war before it's ready for it. What's ready for it? In my estimation, it's China having multiple nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, hundreds on long range stealth bombers, more than a hundred highly capable nuclear attack submarines, a nuclear arsenal at parity with America's, etc. Obviously, China has none of this now and that's what it needs to establish complete escalation dominance in the western Pacific. The highest priority is to develop and deploy these systems as quickly as possible and disrupt any US effort to veer China off-track.
When China is ready, things change almost incomprehensibly. War will not come as a result of an American provocation. It will not be preceded by threats and angry statements. It will come swiftly and quietly and for no other reason than China can win it.
