[yann2]

Piece by piece sounds good. But after Xi and the rest of the old men who run the country kick the can, I find it hard to believe next gen Chinese leaders will care about Taiwan as much. Whats the upside to them for all this drama?

[nradov]

The drama serves as a useful tool to unify the domestic populace against an external enemy and distract them from CCP corruption.

[account42]

If that is the primary reason, then at least actually invading Taiwan is not in their interest since it would remove that tool.

[jollybean]

Taiwan is the #1 foreign policy issue of China and maybe a top 3 long term goal - they consider it existential to their existence.

China is an ethnocentric state, they have long memories and they plan for things.

Xi is definitely more aggressive than the others, but China basically will be trying to 'get Taiwan back forever'.

Frankly, the 'long term solution' if Taiwan remains free, may be something like a 'One China' where Taiwan is actually completely independent. Maybe even Tibet and HK. That would probably only happen if China fell apart, there were wars, and we had this Peace Agreement where the world nominally recognized China as 'One Entity' even if they were actually completely different nation states. That is obviously not likely to happen but aside from a Chinese->Taiwan invasion I don't see how union happens.

The 'Taiwan Issue' is totally nonnegotiable to China, any attempt to bring the issue up in foreign policy discussions would have the Chinese Officials walk out in anger. As far as they are concerned 'Taiwan is China and There Is No Discussion' about it.