Will China Take Taiwan Soon?

I am not an expert on anything relevant and this is not a prediction. Today someone asked me this question, and as the established world order appears to have collapsed, it seems like a timely moment to jot down my thoughts on this topic. I would like to read relevant perspectives and opinions from others, especially those countering my own. Personally, I believe that Betteridge's law applies here: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no," though there are exceptions to this law.

In the late 1990s I worked at Xilinx, a silicon chip designer that uses Taiwanese fabs. Fabs are facilities that produce microchips. Fabs often bake chips for other companies, I believe including most chips used by US firms that send circuit designs to Taiwan for manufacture, most notably by TSMC. This industry is vital to numerous aspects of the global economy, and possibly most critical to the United States in particular. Almost any piece of modern electronics has one or more chips in it, from satellites to cellphones to smart bombs to cars to toasters to robots to…

I was married to a Chinese woman for about 18 years, I have been to China twice, and for two years I lived in Singapore, which I think has about 60% Chinese heritage and strong ties with China (PRC). PRC is the People's Republic of China, which is arguably separate from Taiwan and had been separated from Hong Kong until reunification in 1997. I currently try to spend about half of my time in Asia. While I have always worked with computers, I have not worked in the silicon industry for more than twenty years. I research technology and the region and talk to people, including on flights where I occasionally meet people that work in the industry.

"Taiwan’s separation from the PRC began after the Chinese Civil War. In 1949, the defeated Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan, establishing its own government, while the Communists founded the People’s Republic of China on the mainland. Over time, Taiwan evolved into a self-governing democracy distinct from the authoritarian regime in Beijing, despite the PRC’s ongoing claim over the island. " (ChatGPT)

"Taiwan operates as a de facto sovereign nation—it has its own government, military, and democratic institutions, and it runs its own economic and foreign policies. However, its sovereignty is internationally contested. Most countries adhere to a "One China" policy, recognizing the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate government over China, which includes Taiwan in its territorial claims. This means that while Taiwan functions as an independent state in many practical ways, it is officially recognized as a separate sovereign nation by only a few countries." (ChatGPT)

One of those countries is the USA, which historically has made commitments to defend Taiwan from a potential hostile Chinese takeover. It may be worth noting that I have encountered Taiwanese people who would not object to reunification with China, but I have never been to Taiwan and have no idea how prevalent this sentiment may be.

The Trump administration's disastrous move towards isolationism and bullying Ukraine to allow itself to be taken over by one of the USA's own historic adversaries seem to suggest that the United States will not meet its commitments to defend Taiwan. Not only might selling out Ukraine to one of the USA's most significant historical adversaries encourage China to move against Taiwan, but it may cause the Taiwanese people to question America's commitment to their protection, which could encourage reunification.

Taiwan currently has the most advanced, productive, and therefore important fabs on the planet. Building a fab is a huge project, and it could take years or even a decade or more for the USA to even approach fab parity with Taiwan, at extremely high capital expenditure. The USA currently seems to be investing primarily in data centers that use chips produced in Taiwan rather than trying to leapfrog their fabs, almost certainly due to economic considerations. In other words, the USA may never catch up with Taiwan.

Here's are some points potentially supporting my perspective on why China will not take Taiwan soon:

• Strategically, I believe that PRC always plays a long game. While without protection from other countries, PRC will almost certainly eventually take Taiwan, in adversarial conflict with the USA, China seems to be focused on communication and computing facilities rather than traditional military campaigns, which are far more expensive to manage.
• PRC seems to be in poor economic shape, with high unemployment and severe lack of opportunity for educated young people. Possibly along with a certain sense of entitlement derived from a relative pampered childhood, one result of the lack of opportunity may be the development of a sort of malaise atypical of Chinese culture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping, or "lie flat"). This does not seem like a youthful population enthusiastic about going to war on this issue, especially considering that many in this generation are their parents' only child.
• Troops are expensive to maneuver and require significant quantities of food, fuel, and other resources that are incredibly difficult to maintain for any length of time. Additionally, due to technology, personnel on a battlefield may be decreasingly relevant to military campaigns.
• In addition to the potential personnel issue, poor economic conditions do not seem to provide an opportunity for the military to mount large-scale long-term engagements.
• It would be a complete disaster, but even if the USA did not protect Taiwan, I believe that other nations in the region, potentially even including Australia, may come to its defense.
• One can never be certain of what is truth and what is propaganda, but I have seen many reports about the current generation of Chinese military hardware. Think about Chinese jet fighters, aircraft carriers, and submarines relative to those of Western nations. Are these Chinese resources really viable? Are the ships diesel or nuclear? One concern is that China could develop large numbers of basically disposable UAVs relatively quickly.
• I think that most people have had experiences with relatively shoddy Chinese products. It is likely that the same applies to some extent in describing Chinese military hardware. China is not free of corruption, and in production, shortcuts are often taken. This can result in things like "tofu-dreg" buildings made of shoddy materials, including concrete, which sometimes collapse. Possibly to a lesser extent, the same likely applies to Chinese military hardware.
• Taiwanese fabs would continue to be dependent on ASML, a Dutch company that makes the incredibly high-technology devices used by fabs. In the event of a hostile takeover of Taiwan, the Dutch or the rest of the world might prevent ASML from doing further business with Taiwanese fabs.
• There is a significant intermingling of Western, Chinese, and Taiwanese involvement throughout the silicon industry. Disrupting this could be relatively catastrophic for silicon production in Taiwanese facilities.
• While chips are important for military and other purposes, the industry needs high-volume buyers to remain operative. If the west stopped doing business with Taiwanese fabs, their revenue would disappear.
• While the USA is currently making huge investments in data centers, AI itself does not seem capable of paying dividends in the short term in and of itself. It appears that the near-term path to revenue (though likely not profitability) with AI will be to have consumers pay for it, not to achieve specific gains outside of a relatively small number of industries that may not be significant enough to justify the investment. The USA is already moving restrict consumption of Chinese AI such as DeepSeek.
• DeepSeek has proven that AI does not require the current US silicon investment level. So, other than keeping it off the market, what would China do with all of that silicon?
• We really don't need chips in our toasters and I believe that many of us, especially anyone with mechanical interest and skills, wish that modern cars had less chips. We do not need the high precision chips to build weaponry; in fact, it's likely more cost-effective to use older process nodes.
• The fabs would be relatively vulnerable targets for Western bombs and sabotage techniques. These are incredibly delicate precision devices in clean rooms; it would not take much to disrupt the entire chip production ecosystem.

I am sure that I will think of a few more points as soon as I publish this, but for now at least, I think that's most of my relevant current perspective. I have not had a chance to finish it, and it's more detail than I need, but the book "Chip Wars" by Chris Miller may be the most authoritative source on this topic.

• https://www.amazon.com/Chip-War-Worlds-Critical-Technology/dp/1982172002

This is an engaging explanation of how fabs make chips, which should give you some idea of the challenges involved, though I believe the processes are largely the same for most types of chips, not just Central Processing Units as indicated in the video title.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX9CGRZwD-w