I hope the Pentagon read your last post coz i think it covered most of the eventuations.

Yet another scenario is that they cause some sort of resource sucking event somewhere that doesn't make them look like the bad guy, whatever that is. Cyber attack maybe?

That's the old Sun Tsu technique: The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

You could say that's already been achieved in Hong Kong, with a lot of help from Covid.

The number of western academics insisting China is "open and transparent" would be another example. This is the handiwork of the United Front Work Department, leaching into society. When it comes to a debate over whether to fight for Taiwan, these voices of appeasement could be influential.

Prof Hugh White: (I)t doesn’t follow that either America or Australia should therefore go to war with China to defend Taiwan. I think it’s clear that Australia would be better off staying out of it. Iraq should have taught us that it makes no sense to support an ally in a war it can’t win, and the stakes are much higher this time.

The other thing with cyber-warfare that we've mentioned before is that it's totally covert. We know roughly how much military hardware each country has but we don't know how many pieces of a cyber-attack are in place.

But the biggest likelihood, I think, is a false flag event in which they stage an attack by Taiwan or US forces against some poor, lonely Chinese Coast Guard vessel just out there making sure the world is safe from killer turtles and such. This would: 1) allow them to respond 'defensively' by attacking Taiwan, 2) put the US on the defensive, basically complicating any response, and 3) rally Chinese people behind their military actions.

They seem to be doing their best to provoke an accidental 'trigger incident' but yeah, maybe they'll get tired of waiting and just stage one.

Then there's this:

Lyle Goldstein, research professor, Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute: I think China now has adequate forces, including air, missile, electronic warfare, spec ops, naval, undersea and nuclear, to likely prevail in the first phase and perhaps in subsequent phases too.

If China does manage to invade Taiwan, it will be very hard to get them out - not without a lot of death. Before i thought it was a matter of 'Will democratic countries stand up to defend Taiwan?' - hadn't thought much about losing if they do. But it's quite possible.