Why do folks think that China has a specific deadline in mind? To set a particular year/date with one's personal interests in mind could tremendously compromsie the prospects of such an operation succeeding.
And I thought the 2027 date was debunked?
PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
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And I thought the 2027 date was debunked?
My guess is that Xi will go for one more term.
There's still another 5 years before it becomes really obvious that the power balance has shifted towards China.
And Xi wasn't really elected this this around.
They don't have a date, it is more likely that the US has a date. The US has exponentially increased the levels and nature of its provocations around Taiwan since the early 2020s at least, to a dangerous zone, at a moment when China is becoming a hyperpower compared to them (and in a place that is 100km away from the mainland).
Therefore, anyone with three working brain cells could understand what it entails and that they will not put up with that at some point in the next few years. 2027 is I think the date that the US plans to do the final Taiwan provocation after they consolidate the domestic politics for this presidency. (They want to try and end China's rise.)
Without US provocations = who knows when they would have reunified with Taiwan, maybe even 10 years from now (when the public sentiment finally puts it as an 'unavoidable' level anymore).
But, with those provocations in the picture, that timeline gets squeezed more and more, because people see China's ascension and the US rotting and collapse, and question why their government is doing nothing. Everything is about public sentiment, after a certain point, not even the CPC can guide people to be 'humble' anymore.
The Chinese surely can see this geopolitical trap. That's why they've explicitly stated that the US is trying to goad China into launching a Taiwan campaign. They will likely do their utmost to my minimize the risk of a conflict; this was evident during Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, during which the Chinese side did not respond kinetically despite Chinese people's calls to do so.
Nothing short of a direct Taiwanese pre-emptive strike or deployment of foreign offensive weaponry on the island would trigger a Chinese operation, IMHO.
That's the key point, China likely won’t choose to initiate a large-scale operation against Taiwan in the next 5-10 years, but they will still have to respond with military exercises or other countermeasures, depending on the severity of the provocation just like during the Pelosi visit back then. That's enough to catalyze the war.
Now, suppose, next time something like this happens or worse than Pelosi, China decides to send a message by boarding and inspecting ships that interact with Taiwan.
The US, under some pretext like "defending international waters," sends warships to intervene. Tensions escalate, leading to collisions or accidents. At that point, it's already war.
Of course, this is just a simple surface-level example to illustrate the point. The reality is that if the US wants war, they will get it. China isn’t going to sit back and stay silent in the face of repeated, escalating provocations, they will have to respond in some way proportionally.
And as their previous measures fail to deter these provocations, their responses will become increasingly aggressive. They have a domestic audience constantly watching this.
The more the US escalates, the more severe China's responses will have to be to match it, no matter how restrained they are as a baseline.
Eventually, their reaction will reach a tipping point where the US can spin it into a justification for war, one they can sell to their own people and the so-called "international community" at least, but that's enough for them.
The reality is that the US doesn’t actually care about Taiwan, it’s not about protecting democracy or sovereignty. What they truly care about is stopping China’s rise, particularly the threat it poses to the dollar-based financial system.
That’s the real reason they’ve decided China must be stopped. And since all other avenues have failed, in their minds, only a direct military confrontation remains.
People focus too much on Taiwan, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s relatively insignificant. It just happens to be the most useful proxy for the US to manufacture a war with China.
At this point, the trajectory is clear, the US has committed to this path. The only thing left is to resolve its current internal political struggles before fully setting things in motion.