One can hardly deny that China has become more bellicose over the last few years. It’s also impossible to deny that China still, after all this time, views Taiwan as a breakaway, rogue province and would like nothing more than to take it back and place it under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule. But China has some very troubling problems of its own: An economy in trouble, a population that’s dropping off a demographic cliff, and a corrupt, totalitarian government.
That doesn’t mean that they might not, at some point, try to take Taiwan anyway. On Monday, in the Asia Times, the scribe Gabriel Honrada walks us through some of China’s issues.
In estimating China’s possible timeframe for a Taiwan conflict, Timothy Heath and other writers note in a June 2023 RAND analysis that Taiwan is most vulnerable to defeat in the first 90 days of a Chinese invasion.
Heath and others mention…
