Comment by caycep

To the extent Xi Jinping isn't seriously interested in invading Taiwan (and that seems dubious), he still needs to keep the PLA and other factions thinking he does. Reclaiming Taiwan is a pillar of PLA ideology and strategic doctrine. PLA culture is why China has never forced its will in North Korea despite continued disobedience to Beijing--the old guard in the PLA feels honor bound to defend North Korea's independence, rather than making it a client state, which it easily could do. It's similar to defense policy hawks in the US regarding Middle East intervention, who have nominally always been a minority faction. Perennial Middle East intervention never made much sense, and yet it keeps happening over and over, even when the military is woefully unprepared (e.g. Iran), because that faction is adept at manipulating defense policy, and has been playing the same long game since the 1990s. Which is precisely why the Taiwan threat is real. China isn't a political monolith, and the forces pushing to invade Taiwan, even if presently held at bay, could succeed in a blink of an eye, even without China being properly prepared for a successful invasion.

No one has watched Ukraine unfold and said "Yes, it will indeed be easy for me to invade a smaller but technically sophisticated neighbor"

China will never invade Taiwan, but they will unite politically one day.

> they just want everyone to think that way

That's the thing with religious or ideologically driven dictators. They're nutjobs, not beholden to reality in their decisionmaking but to whatever their ideology prescribes - and thus are prone to making decisions that seem to (or end up being) utterly stupid / irrational.

With Yugoslavia, it was Tito's idea to force all the various countries into one common ethnicity. With Russia, it is Putin's dream of restoring "Greater Russia". With China, it's the dream of re-unification with Taiwan on one side, and reversing what is seen as a land grab by back-then Czarist Russia in Outer Manchuria. With Trump it is the desperate desire to be beloved (and the desire of his Project 2025 handlers to turn the US into an ethno-christo-nationalist state). With Ben Gvir and Smotrich in Israel, it is the desire to wipe out anything Palestinian.

And the result of these madmen was and is an untold amount of needless suffering. There is no reason at all to not believe what China is openly saying [1] and to prepare accordingly. Better be prepared than be sorry.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/31/xi-jinping-vow...