An important consideration is that they'll still have to rebuild afterwards. The better the economic conditions, the less material basis there would be for an insurgency/renewed separatist movement, and I imagine after reunification the PLA will have a lot of assets stationed in Taiwan to push A2AD further out.
My gut tells me the cost of a shorter war (due to additional destruction of Taiwan's infrastructure) will far outweigh the additional cost of rebuilding.
A China-Taiwan war will incur at least a billion in Chinese military costs every day.
A China-Taiwan war would also inevitably depress Chinese domestic economic activity.
In terms of Chinese imports and exports, there is $16 Billion of direct trade happening every day.
With economic multiplier effects, every additional day of a China-Taiwan war would cost China billions every day.
And China does have surplus construction capacity to quickly rebuild everything in Taiwan.
So during reconstruction, the actual cost to the Chinese government will be offset by the additional economic activity and taxation.
Remember that there are only 23 million people in Taiwan. Taiwan's economy is like 20x smaller than China, so even the cost of rebuilding from scratch is manageable.
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And look at the optics of leaving Taiwanese society functional. If Taiwan is perceived to be surviving or winning, then the US will be very tempted to intervene to support Taiwan (if this hasn't already happened). Then the military and economic costs to China increase exponentially.
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From that perspective, it's better to completely destroy Taiwanese infrastructure at the beginning so that there's no electricity, fuel, water, food or communications. After a few weeks, we'll start seeing hungry civilians and the disintegration of Taiwan. How can the Taiwanese military function in a broken society surrounded by hungry civilians? Think Japan or Germany in the closing days of WW2. Then it will be clear to both Taiwan and the USA that:
1. Taiwan's collapse is inevitable and will happen in weeks
2. China does have the power to blockade Taiwan for months even if the US military tries its best
3. The only way to prevent the collapse of Taiwan (with people fighting for food) is a China-Taiwan deal.
Then there's no point in the US going to war with China or the US continuing a war against China.
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I wouldn't expect a China-Taiwan settlement to be particularly harsh and for it to be similar to Hong Kong.
For example, Taiwanese semiconductor engineers are paid 3x more in China than in Taiwan.
In the aftermath, it's essentially a single market, but which still has a huge shortage of skilled semiconductor staff.
So I expect wages for semiconductor engineers in Taiwan to easily double.
And we can look to the experience of Germany and Japan in the aftermath of WW2. Japan has the distinction of being the only country which has actually been nuked. And those US nukes worked as a terror weapon which persuaded Japan to surrender. Then Japan reconciled itself to being a loyal American "ally".
In comparison, Taiwanese will be officially equal citizens to everyone else in the PRC. So come to think of it, a better comparison would be to the defeated people of the Confederate States of America who reconciled themselves to being conquered by the USA.
And yes, the A2AD perimeter would be pushed out into the Pacific. At a minimum, the hardened mountain airbases and some ports will be transferred to the Chinese military.
That reminds me:
@Patchwork_Chimera a while ago you shared an image of (IIRC) salvo generation numbers within ranges of the PRC mainland. It was quite aesthetically pleasing, with smooth red gradients originating from the mainland and spreading out in big bubbles. I believe I also saw a graphic from you that showed a relatively safe area for US submarines to operate, maybe in a context of a hot war between the US and the PRC. Once you've gotten some rest and if you'd be interested, something I'm really curious about is how PRC control of Taiwan and the PLA building up military forces in Taiwan would affect those maps. Would that make it unlikely for the US to be able to operate its subs in that relative "safe zone"? How would it affect salvo sizes and ranges in potential areas of conflict?
If you're too busy for these questions or I'm pestering you too much, please let me know! I'm simply curious, because we often hear about how the US holding Taiwan is a significant strategic advantage and the PRC holding Taiwan would give them a much better strategic position, but I've never seen anyone go into detail on exactly how that better strategic position would manifest.
Edit: I'm new to the forum and there was some technical weirdness when posting this, hopefully it doesn't result in a double tag. If you're seeing this edit it hopefully means I've fixed it lol.
