I've been pretty skeptical of an invasion scenario. It's never made sense to me, because Taiwan is so close to the Mainland. If Taiwan wanted to, they could do an immense amount of damage to valuable infrastructure. When this is posited online to a Chinese audience, it seems people believe that they would never do that because China would annihilate the country.

My take is that China just plans to harass Taiwan. Last week it's believed China cut internet cables. We might continue to see China escalate until they start creating real economic damage (i.e an embargo).

This military build up is to make the US more hesitant to get involved in behaviors that don't quite warrant a war, but are severe enough to start pressuring Taiwan for concessions.

This whole situation is honestly pretty scary still, because it relies on no miscalculations. My own take is I blame Xi. Past presidents, like Obama, are often blamed for their weak stance against China, but many don't realize Hu Jin Tao was an entirely different leader. All the NYTimes articles about China joining the global order seemed far more reasonable, because Hu was very pro-globalization and no where close to as nationalistic. The KMT (Taiwan's pro-China party), was much stronger when China was run by Hu.

Recently Xi has broken convention and is in his third term. He has through anti-corruption campaigns and politicking filled the politburo with his people. There was a brief belief that post-covid, the country would pivot, however that now looks unlikely. China and America are going to have a tumultuous half-decade at-least.