Threats to invade China really just exposes how much on the back foot America is now on.Kinda less meaningful these days since Western politicians are openly visiting Taiwan these days and Taiwanese ministers also visit Western countries regularly. This did not happen before. So, Taiwan under DPP has had a massive boost in terms of "diplomatic presence" in the last few years. Ofcourse it relates to how anti-China the west has become and they do not really care about offending Beijing anymore, they actually want to offend Beijing as much as they can.
China is pretty much helpless to stop Taiwan's elevation in the west. The more powerful China becomes, the more the west wants to contain and destroy China, the more they support Taiwan in every way they can. The only response China has is doing military drills.
Economic sanctions no longer works against the West because they actually WANT to decouple from China. They welcome any sanction or economic response from China because they can simply parade it as more Chinese aggression against the west and demonize China even further.
Its a death spiral that keeps going towards some kind of Taiwan strait Crisis. Cause unless China stop the constant western support and semi-recognition of Taiwan, soon we will see Taiwan Representative Offices in a lot of western countries and even more Western Arms and even troops. They will not stop Salami Slicing.
China will have to more towards some kind of massive military retaliation, cause that is the only option they have left to stop this death spiral.
The only way to stop this is to create such a massive fear in the minds of the Taiwanese that they are the ones that would discourage the west, not the other way around. That is the only way remaining.
But if this military crisis does not work and only escalates towards even more western support for Taiwan, then I think we are looking at the start of the "THE GREAT TAIWAN WAR"
Contrary to what US will admit, it was never confident in its ability to take over Taiwan. There were many good chances for America to pull off their version of the crimea annexation, when China was not militarised at all and the only thing China could do to stop an invasion would be to lob tactical nukes at US formations.
Even then, America didn't dare to invade.
So that they're betting their future on this, in such a late hour when China has military parity, reeks of desparation.
As long as China can prevent a pearl harbor style surprise attack against the navy followed by a fait accompli landing of US invaders on its island, moves which America was never confident of pulling off even again Jiang Zemin's China, they'll never be able to do anything.