About Red China relax Ralph, you're sounding a bit paranoid and worried like it's October '62, and then didn't Soviet intelligence lead the entire world down the MAD garden path.

The Taiwan Straight is 180k wide, narrowest is 130k but is it there beach worthy? China would first need to secure the Penghu Islands, Taiwan's sentinel, and the defences there would cause a dent. Then it would have to secure a Formosan beach and when was the last time China stormed the beaches? If they did manage to secure a beach head for an invasion to succeed, they would need to land thousands and thousands of troops! How are they going to supply them? What is their experience of mass logistical supply?
When the Allies landed in Normandy in '44 they initially needed 6,000 tons per day quickly rising to 20k per day with no ports, and with a comparable distance of supply back to Britain that Taiwan is to the mainland. The Normandy landing was opposed by basic troops and came close to failing. Are the Taiwanese going to field basic troops? And then there was the Mulberry storm.

The Typhoon season for Taiwan is from May to November and so realistically there is the chance of a cyclonic storm easily destroying supply and creating havoc from April to December (safety factor), which would leave only 3 or 4 months to conquer an extremely large land mass defended by a capable military and overall, it would be the first time ever such a massive military undertaking had been carried out by the PLAN within an extremely critically limited time frame.

Three and a half years ago or so all of us were convinced the Russian military was going to roll across a shared land border and crush Ukraine within one or two weeks. And so, China is going to succeed in a sea borne invasion over a distance 130/180 km of open sea within four months? I wonder who the Chi-Com general/admiral is who is going to get this command? Lucky guy.

You have your reasons for an argument that in 2027 or thereabouts (Xi's D-Day) we may well be at war over Taiwan which is fine, you have your view and perhaps Xi will justify it all and have an aggressive go. I think though that there are others in the leadership who are sceptical, very wary and, do have influence. Putin has failed miserably and the only way he can escape from the mess he has caused in the slightest is for at least all of the Donbas and many other concessions be ceded to him and if so, even then his short term existence will be in doubt and I think that is clear to most if not all, including the CPC.

If China fails to conquer Taiwan quickly anything could happen, and that can only mean disaster for Xi and the party. I'll think they'll just wait Taiwan out, they'll add constant pressure but the only outcome for the future and longevity of the CPC is a bloodless submission of Taiwan into the fold. That too would be a disaster for the Western Pacific region, but at least there would be no killing and the world's stock market's wouldn't suffer as much.