The Times on Saturday had a different view: - here is the link - www.thetimes.co.uk/article/china-talks-tough-on-taiwan-but-an-invasion-would-be-harder-than-it-looks-wrhtcxvjt
I don't know how to do a share token (could somebody tell me - I have a subscription, but can't see any way of doing this?) and it is all really worth reading - but here are some key paragraphs:
"To hear the way China tells it (and as repeated by too many lazy commentators), Taiwan is unfinished business from the Chinese civil war, which ended in 1949 with the communists seizing power on the mainland and the defeated nationalists of Chiang Kai-shek fleeing to Taiwan. This is plain wrong: Taiwanese history did not begin in 1949. Its history is long, rich and distinct.
China’s claim of sovereignty is highly problematic. Taiwan has all the attributes of a nation state, and a very successful one at that. The fact it is not recognised as such and is denied its formal right to self-determination is down to Beijing’s bullying of anybody — from celebrities to companies and countries — who would question its dubious narrative.
It was about six millennia ago that ancestors of the Taiwanese indigenous peoples settled on the island. Mainland Chinese and Europeans, including the Spanish and Dutch, joined them between the 13th and 17th centuries. The Dutch were defeated by a Chinese general in 1661; 22 years later the island was annexed by the Qing dynasty, which ceded it to Japan in 1895. In 1960s it entered a period of rapid economic growth known as the Taiwan miracle.
It was Japan, during its occupation of Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, that coined the phrase “unsinkable aircraft carrier” to describe the island’s strategic importance. It has been described as the “cork in the bottle” of the South China Sea, controlling access between southeast and northeast Asia. Japan is acutely aware that keeping these shipping lanes open is essential to its national survival, and has increasingly linked its own national security with that of Taiwan.
Tokyo is deeply unnerved by the prospect of Taiwan falling under the control of an increasingly hostile and aggressive Beijing. Japanese officials have concluded that China’s imperial ambitions in north Asia are unlikely to stop at Taiwan.
The United States knows that if China took Taiwan it would irreversibly shift the balance of power in Asia and beyond. For his part, Xi is increasingly boxed in. He has made the “recovery” of Taiwan a key part of his “Chinese Dream” of national rejuvenation. To try and to fail would almost certainly lead to his downfall and possibly that of the CCP."
Do see the rest of it, which talks about Ukraine and how this war is being studied by both side. Sorry I don't know how else to share, and it is a long article.