your cat-eat-tiger thesis is a wishful thinking that the chance of happening is less than an 911-like event.
OMG!! The volatility in the market is just so low it's ridiculous!! C'mon China, invade Taiwan already!! Grow a pair and just go over there and just drop a bomb there, drop anything!! It's just right there!! Stop the military exercise and do the real thing already! Invade Taiwan so I can trade!!!
When Pelosi went over there she was only able to visit Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea (President refused to see her). Its very telling and yet another in a long list of desperation moves lately. It has a bad look. Taiwan wont be separate much longer and South Korea has been forced to make a choice (easy decision). Singapore is only a city... Malaysia, the connected country is Islamic. Japan is an old grey dinosaur with a crashing central bank policy. The most telling was Pelosi not visiting Philippines where we once had the largest Air Force base in the world and one of the largest Naval Ports in the world. US foreign policy is like watching a slow motion train wreck. Yet Asia is clearly the new, forward, leading direction for all things financial, economical, industrial and logistical. US is like the awkward, odd guy trying to tag along in this group. Its kinda cringe. When china makes its move...US will remain behind locked doors...watching out the bedroom window with the curtain half pulled. Hoping someone else will fight its battles.
China will take care the thorn on its side before carrying out its world domination agenda. Anything could happen while your main forces are fighting or get bogged down in the distant land. Taiwan and other internal forces can sneak back in and attack China (so the immediate threat to China's agenda is Taiwan). Also, one would need to get his house in order to execute bigger plans. Consequences of Ukraine's giving up on its nuclear weapons: Why Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons and what that means in a Russian invasion : NPR
Two words: Money talk. All those are because China's got money and everybody wants to get on its good side very much like all the shameless relatives who want to get on the good side of this rich uncle that struck rich on a gold mine. If tomorrow China goes back to how it was in the 80's, nobody would be on its side. There is no "new, forward, leading direction". The direction is where the money leads. Hope China doesn't get ahead of itself there thinking it's really the master of foreign diplomacy all of sudden. And even with all the money, the only die-hard cheerleading countries for China in this Taiwan situation are basically Russia and North Korea, both countries whose support China bought with $$ being the only country supporting Russia in its invasion of Ukraine and the only country befriending North Korea and supporting it forever. With regards to South Korea, it's understandable that the South Korean president seemingly wants to avoid Pelosi (He was already on vacation BEFORE the visit btw so he was not avoiding Pelosi on purpose as how the media hyped it and he did talk to Pelosi over the phone afterwards). It's not because it is afraid of upsetting China or supporting China's efforts of taking over Taiwan. South Korea's message before Pelosi's visit was very clear: it wants regional peace and stability and that means no war. Since Taiwan does not have the intention of attacking mainland China militarily and China's has been the one who's doing military exercises along the Taiwan Strait and even landing missiles within the Economic Zones of Japan, we all know very clear to whom that message is intended. No it's actually a show of his intention of self-governance of its own country's affairs and no interference from "foreign" influences in its own quest of uniting with North Korea providing that it can trust North Korea of willing to give up its communism or somehow compromising to allow South Korea's pursuit of democracy and at the same time sending a message to China that just as it doesn't welcome USA's influence it doesn't want China's meddling in the Korean affairs either. So again, I hope China doesn't get ahead of itself by thinking that South Korea's "snub" of Pelosi is really its intention of being closer to China and somehow it's being the "forward" direction. And as for Malaysia, it couldn't care less either way. It's not in the Eastern Asian region and whatever is happening there is really not that much of a concern. If it's really concerned about the Islamic population, it should think about China's treatment of their fellow Islamic brothers in the Xinjiang Uyghur region... So like I said, China really needs to look at things from an objective and realistic perspective instead of always in delusional self-elevating versions.
The US and the West needs to get focused and has a long-term plan that gets carried through administration changes.
That's a good point. But the far bigger cost would be if the western export markets are cut off. That will mean an actual collapse of Chinese manufacturing as the rest of the world has relatively small purchasing power. If China chooses its ideological war over economics then they are far dumber than I imagined.
Taiwan doesn't have the edge to sustain a fight with China. It's going to lose eventually. I think Taiwan is going to have a referendum whether to fight with China or not. people would vote for not to fight and join China (I hate to say this, at least, Taiwan caves to a winner).
That's actually the better point to discuss. Interestingly, a war would trigger sanctions against China, which would severely impact its export oriented economy. However, thanks to global trade integration (which I believe in), the US and Europe depend on direct or indirect Chinese imports for much of their own economies. Unfortunately, I think China could withstand an economic blockade longer than the US or Europe could withstand shortages of most everything manufactured. On the other hand, we're already seeing decoupling from China. Is this significant or not, I don't know, but it signals a corporate concern that a war is a strong enough possibility to warrant moving production out. As a consequence, other nations will benefit from the manufacturing drain, countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia or Indonesia have much to gain from at least the threats of a conflict. If the CCP has a change of heart and Xi is disappeared, would foreign manufacturers return to China? Not a given. It's also not a given that Taiwan will fight a war with China. They may reluctantly be willing to agree to a face saving deal to prevent massive deaths and destruction. If so, how will the Chinese manufacturing dependent West respond? How long would a trade embargo last? Like Hong Kong which saw a brain drain to the UK and Australia before the CCP took over, we can expect Japan, Portugal, Australia and the US to receive lots of educated middle and upper class immigrants with their fortunes and whatever else they can ship out before a Chinese takeover. This could have a great positive economic impact on the smaller receiving countries.
Why Portugal? B/c of Macau? I think they rather would settle somewhere else than in Portugal. Because of this ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macau#Demographics ) : " The overwhelming majority (88.7 per cent) are Chinese, many of whom originate from Guangdong (31.9 per cent) or Fujian (5.9 per cent).[112] The remaining 11.6 per cent are non ethnic Chinese minorities, primarily Filipinos (4.6 per cent), Vietnamese (2.4 per cent), and Portuguese (1.8 per cent). [...] The predominant language is Cantonese, a variety of Chinese originating in Guangdong. It is spoken by 87.5 per cent of the population, 80.1 per cent as a first language and 7.5 per cent as a second language. Only 2.3 per cent can speak Portuguese [...] " Ie. in Macau only 1.8% are Portuguese, and only 2.3% can speak Portuguese. I don't think any significant numbers would want to leave b/c people in Macau are one of the richest in the World according to the above wikipedia info. Are any numbers known for Hong Kong people leaving for other countries like the UK ? Foreign paid agitators, traitors and dissidents of course have to leave for their own safety... But they are just a few, less than 0.001%, IMHO. For Macau in total maybe less than 1000 people would leave, and for Hong Kong less than 8000, I guess.