This assessment of China's threat to invade Taiwan isn't quite wrong but it isn't quite right:
One should not forget that in 2013, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense reported that China’s leaders had recommitted themselves to “continue the 2020 Plan,” whereby they would be able to “build and deploy a complete operational capability to use force against Taiwan by that year.” By implication, these leaders believe that by 2020, the PLA also will be able to fend off U.S. forces and thus be able to successfully invade Taiwan.
As such, President Xi’s Zhurihe speech can and should be interpreted as certifying that the PLA (all Chinese military forces) has achieved the capability to “safeguard China’s national sovereignty”—two years ahead of schedule.
The call to be on guard to the threat China poses to Taiwan is spot on.
But I don't believe that China has a new capacity to invade Taiwan. I think they've had it for some time now.
The question has been the number of dead Chinese troops as the acceptable price of capturing Taiwan.
My guess is that increases in Chinese capabilities announced by Xi represent the ability to achieve the military objective with acceptable losses.
Further, China's arrival at this stage does not mean that China has concluded by implication that they can fed off US forces. It just means that China thinks it can stall American intervention and conclude the invasion of Taiwan before America can effectively intervene.
Really, how long would it take America to make the political decision to risk war with China and then put forces and supplies in motion to overcome potential Chinese opposition?
Would the war be effectively over by the time American forces arrive in numbers sufficient to defeat China?
The author thinks that the conquest of Taiwan by 2030 would be soon enough for the world to get over the aggression in plenty of time to celebrate a century of the People's Republic of China in 2049, and so this is a period of maximum danger.
Of course, the question of whether China thinks the balance of power by then would require China to deign to worry about the world's reaction is another variable altogether.
