I speculated that this might mean that China will invade Taiwan on the eve of the 2008 Summer Olympics in order to gain surprise. That's what I'd do if I was in charge of China.
But I've always held that China would want to achieve this fast to avoid a drawn out war that risks our intervention on Taiwan's side (and add in Japan, too, if we help Taiwan).
I've also written that China is terribly vulnerable to our naval power as well as the growing naval strength of other regional powers that could cut off China's trade and lead to a crisis in China's economy. I'm not sure China's holdings of our debt and their role in exporting cheap goods to us offsets their own vulnerability to their sea lines of communication.
Strategypage writes that China is increasingly aware of their possible greater vulnerability:
The Chinese have a bigger problem, in that interruption of their seaborne trade would have immediate, and serious economic and political impact. Over a hundred million people would be put out of work. The main thing that keeps the Chinese Communist Party in power has been economic growth. Without it, China would have gone the way of the Communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe.
Look at it this way, a protracted war against Taiwan, including interruption of commercial shipping, would do far more damage to China, than to the Western nations that trade with China. While journalists can quickly whip up nightmare scenarios about Americans unable to cope with the loss of Chinese goods, the American companies have been using risk management techniques for decades to plan for these eventualities, and deal with them. This goes largely unnoticed by the general public, but it would be a major "weapon" in any future war with China.
... As a result, China appears to have shifted to a strategy of subverting political parties on Taiwan, and terrorizing others, in order to eventually carry out a voluntary merger with the mainland.
So the result of this awareness of their vulnerability is that China is no longer thinking of invading Taiwan?
Perhaps. But if China still wants to invade and conquer Taiwan, that would be a helpful assumption to promote to make our response less effective.
And remember, the Chinese worry about war only if it is protracted. If China thinks that a war for Taiwan would be brief, this does not mean that war is less likely.
If China thinks that we will not intervene, or that our intervention will be ineffective, or that Taiwan can't resist a major Chinese assault, then China will invade if the alternative is seeing Taiwan slip away on a road to legal independence.
Heck, if China believes they must have Taiwan and worry we might intervene quickly, the Chinese might believe they must strike our base at Guam first in order to buy the time they need to invade Taiwan. The Chinese might believe a sharp blow will cow us rather than enrage us.
Remember, any war over Taiwan will be initiated by China. So the key is what China's leaders believe is a rational move--not what we believe.
Not going to war is only one way to cope with their vulnerability to a protracted war. The other is to win fast and assume the war ends then.
