I don’t think it’s likely. Personally I think Xi Jinping is just weak and he needs to create distractions for the Mainland Chinese so that they won’t take out their anger on him as economic growth continues to slow down.
Also Taiwan’s coastline is quite difficult to invade and it also has a sophisticated missile system.
Well, when they’re ready to reunite with us, I think it’s we can let them keep their own autonomy to save face. You know, one country 2 systems.
Do you think China cares about whether Taiwanese are left alive? If China decides to attack Taiwan, China will launch missiles and use bombs to send Taiwan back to the stone age and then rebuild it after moving 30 million Chinese to the ruins of Taiwan.
My sophisticated model that I just doodled on a napkin with a lead pencil No. 2 calculates March of 2136 for unification after the Republic of Taiwan offers a bridge loan under various conditions to insolvent China, but it could be a bit earlier if the model excludes leap days every 4 years.
The Chinese Government won’t exist in 2050, or at least won’t be in control of all of mainland China, let alone Taiwan. When China’s house-of-cards economy collapses, the Government will lose control of everywhere except perhaps Northern China.
50-50? My most likely unification scenario is not so much a Chinese invasion, as political surrender by Taiwanese politicians, cast as a “peace agreement.” How exactly this would affect the system here is an interesting question. For example, if the ROC government simply conceded that it was “part of” the PRC, but otherwise continued functioning as before (perhaps relabeled), then that wouldn’t by itself give us a Hong Kong type system, where the PRC is able to manipulate the semi-democratic system through appointments and court decisions. They’d still have the tools of bribery / patronage and media domination, of course, and will have amassed enough data on individuals to intimidate many of them.
(In the past, I understand that China has offered Taiwan an agreement whereby Taiwan would keep its system of government, and independent military.)
Otherwise, we might still have a stalemate in which the USA, and perhaps also Japan, continue to counterbalance China. Or China could…if not exactly collapse, then at least be seriously weakened by such macro-level difficulties as demographic aging or economic stagnation. Some sources speculate that this is likely to happen in about a decade.
My worst-case scenarios are unrelated to unification: nuclear accidents here, or on the Chinese coast, that turn Taiwan into another Chernobyl; a volcanic eruption (probably in Indonesia) that changes world weather; spiraling global economic collapse…
What do you mean ‘Re-unified’? Was it ever unified?
Yes–between 1945 and 1949, plus a few decades prior to 1895. (This last arguably applies only to the coastal plains, in case anybody wants to rebuild the Savage Guard Line.)
Gracias.
Not this again. Why will Chins ‘collspse’ even if it has an economic setback ?
Debt bubble meets global recession, bank closures, hundreds of millions of angry unemployed young men on the streets…
We’ve been waiting for this collapse for decades.
Meanwhile if you to China it is extremely developed already , its not going to collapse.
The “unification” window closes for China by 2030-ish. China is getting old and its economy is slowing while south and southeast Asia are trucking ahead. Once they catch up China will not even dream of invading.
If the commies do collapse do we get to retake the mainland? 
Would you want it?
Yes. We’re going to get slow-walked into a Hong Kong situation. There won’t be any shooting war.
These shoes could come in handy for that 
I think we should divide it up among various foreign powers. Japan could get Shandong again. Russia could take Chuguchak.
what’s the point of doing that? Taiwan has a world-class semiconductor industry. It produces over half of the world’s semiconductors.
It could threaten to do that.
You don’t know that Taiwan could essentially do the same thing if they wanted to ?