And it's not China vs Taiwan straight up. It's China vs Taiwan, US, Japan, Australia, parts of nato.
China imports vast quantities of goods, so yes, debt matters.
> China imports vast quantities of goods, so yes, debt matters.
Yes, external debt matters. However, they don't have much external debt.
And China's imports are decreasing faster than their exports are. And that trend will accelerate because the two biggest are electronics which we are sanctioning and oil which they are rapidly weaning themselves off of.
Unless you think the China's plan is to fill the Taiwan straits with so many dead bodies/boats so quickly, that it will create a corpse bridge for tanks to roll on.
The point is that delaying the war would have made things even worse than they presently are. 2022 wasn't a good time for a war, but it was a better time than any subsequent year.