the gap between the US military and Chinese military is massive.

US is behind in most important areas, and vastly underproducing China despite spending much more. Drones and hypersonics are the important weapons. Navies/tanks are all extremely fragile now, because of these weapons. Iran was able to match US/Israel sufficiently for ending the war by bombing a mountain. Russia is also outproducing the entirety of NATO in important defense areas that, together with nationalist full self defense motivation, has outmatched west’s propaganda driven proxy war political will, with Ukraine’s assessment of Russian war costs only 20% higher than just the western aid to Ukraine. 75% loss of GDP, 8m emigrants, and loss of territory since 2014 war provocations, as Russia has gotten much stronger in addition to passing Germany and Japan in PPP GDP is simply a collapse of the west event by itself.

The point is that if China had the ability to do something like this then they would’ve already done, but they haven’t because they can’t.

Capability is expanding significantly every year. Autonomy with friendship is best outcome for Taiwan that it must balance to retain autonomy, which has been heading in wrong direction. Taiwan parliament majority is pro “neutrality” even if president is nazi. Easier, and more important to China, is a blockade of Taiwan that forces all exports to go through China first. US is currently losing ROK’s allegiance. Japan and Philippines are cruising for a bruising. US is likely willing to trade Asia for Latin America