There won't be a Chinese history nor a world history if China loses, this isn't the 1920s, ceding major territory won't happen because China has nukes.
In my view, an US invasion is inevitable, but as long as China is improving more than US, they should wait for US to attack first. Whether this attack comes as a direct US assault on the island, or by a significant transfer of military support/recognition to militant US collaborators.
In the meantime, China can and should increase its defensive operations in Taiwan, this means both covert counteraction, overflight by planes and ships stationed to hold sea areas. And it should also actualize the government's right to jurisdiction in Taiwan. First gradually, then more generally.
Waiting has been a good logic so far because each decade heavily improves China while US is staying stagnant due to corruption/poor institutional regulation. For example, US has had a 100 major ship navy for like 40 years. While China has gone from 0 to 4 to 12 and with escort destroyers ballooning from 10 to 40-50, each of them qualitatively superior to the USN counterpart.
What people think inside Taiwan has always been irrelevant, the absolute majority of the country doesn't want to cede Taiwan so it doesn't matter what a few million living in Taiwan thinks. Same logic like Ukraine has in Donbass and Crimea. If it really comes down to it, we'll just do as the Ukraine does whenever they take a town in the Donbass (admittedly not happened in a long time): tell the population to evacuate to stable territory and summarily get rid of anyone refusing and/or showing pro invaders opinions.
