[jimmont]

China is more likely to have its government choose a very different leader with resulting policy changes than attack Taiwan. Its economy and along with this politics have increasing problems which are unlikely to reach a plateau or improve in the next decade, possibly longer, and the current leader's policies are accelerating and exacerbating these problems. The only major wild card I see is if the government is able to make a unilateral move against Taiwan in an effort to distract from its internal problems. I don't know how the PRC works well enough to have some notion of how realistic this might be. Given Biden's restatement of the US positions it seems even less likely this would happen. And if it did I'd expect the US and Japan will immediately become involved, promptly followed by other allies if it escalates. What I also cannot gauge is what might happen if action were limited to only a place like Kinmen. If so the arms shipments to Taiwan and would likely immediately change and who knows maybe both Japan and the US would setup military bases there.