By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

How a Convergence of Factors Could Tempt Beijing to Act

In 2021, U.S. Navy Admiral Philip Davidson, then the commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services that Beijing had set a serious goal of controlling Taiwan before 2027. “Taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions before then,” he warned. “And I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact, in the next six years.”

This prediction, which gained so much attention in Washington that it came to be known as the Davidson Window, quickly spurred action. Within the year, Congress authorized $7.1 billion for the newly created Pacific Deterrence Initiative, designed to boost the United States’ capability to deter Chinese military adventurism, and the policy community scrambled to develop strategies to counter Chinese military threats. The U.S. government offered so much diplomatic, political, economic, and security support to Taiwan that some veteran Taiwan watchers began to remind U.S. policymakers of the importance of reassuring China that the United States doesn’t support Taiwan independence.

In the past few years, however, many observers began to question the Davidson Window. They think China’s military is not ready for such a difficult operation—and for good reasons. An amphibious landing followed by an assault on a mountainous island like Taiwan would be operationally difficult. And China’s military is embroiled in rounds of purges that have ousted numerous senior generals. The costs and consequences of Russia’s war in Ukraine, meanwhile, have demonstrated the difficulty of a takeover and the devastating result of sanctions. China has enough other priorities, the theory goes, that Taiwan is unlikely to be on the agenda today.

But what this theory misses is that the Chinese view on Taiwan changed significantly in 2025. In the past year, China has been highly vocal about the inevitability and indisputability of what it calls its “reunification” with Taiwan. Although skeptics would say China has always made these claims, this time something is different: this time, China believes it. The Chinese policy community is increasingly convinced that an effort to assert control of Taiwan will happen, and it could even be imminent if Taiwan does something to provoke Beijing. The fundamental driver of this new assessment is U.S. politics and the perception that U.S. President Donald Trump has little interest in defending Taiwan militarily. Augmenting it is Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s own tenacious pursuit of unification and the decline in popularity of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te. In other words, China sees an opportunity that may not arise again down the road.

There are moments in history when multiple internal and external factors act jointly to promote a certain outcome—when “perfect storms” brew and the seemingly unimaginable starts to take hold. Given the current circumstances, such a perfect storm for Taiwan might be coming sooner than people think.

 

The Xi Legacy

Although Xi has instructed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to be ready to take Taiwan by force by 2027, it is hard to imagine that China would take action that year. The Chinese Communist Party will have its 21st Party Congress in the fall of 2027, and in Chinese politics, the priority during any given party congress year is absolute stability. All decisions are evaluated first and foremost against whether they could cause even the slightest possibility of political uncertainty. The CCP is a fundamentally conservative organization, and any major decisions that could challenge the delicate balance of power within the party during a time of heightened intraparty politics would likely be postponed.

But 2027 is critical for another reason: it marks the end of Xi’s third term in charge. Discussions about the succession plan for Xi, who will be 74 years old at that time, have been quiet but ongoing. The dominant theory among observers is that Xi won’t hand over power all at once, but as early as 2027 he could give up one of the three top leadership roles: president (head of the government), general secretary of the party, and chairman of the Central Military Commission. He would then incrementally give up the others, with the option to suspend or abandon this process at any time.

Above Hu Jintao been taken away on orders of President Xi.

Since 1949, the CCP leadership has made different decisions about succession regarding these three positions. Mao Zedong gave up the presidency in 1959 after being challenged within the party, but he retained the position of general secretary of the party and the chairmanship of the Central Military Commission. Deng Xiaoping gave up all three when he handed over power to Jiang Zemin in 1989, but he maintained unparalleled authority behind the scenes through the Central Advisory Commission, a consultative body composed of party elders. In 2002, Jiang Zemin gave up the presidency and relinquished his position as general secretary of the party but retained leadership of the military for another three years—well into Hu Jintao’s first term. And Hu gave up all three to Xi when he stepped down.

If a succession process begins soon, many observers predict Xi will give up the presidency first, as it has the least power of the three. Handing over any title, however, would jeopardize absolute consensus within the system. With power decentralized, any military plan to take over Taiwan would likely be postponed.

It is entirely possible that 2027 may come and go with Xi launching a fourth term fully in charge. Xi does not have to step aside, nor does he have to take control of Taiwan—it is not a defined key performance indicator for Xi, just as it was not for any of his predecessors. But Xi, more than any previous leader, has pushed harder for bringing Taiwan to heel. If Xi has a chance to achieve his goal of “reunification,” he is likely to take it.

 

Now or Never

So far, a fundamental reason Xi has not used force against Taiwan is that it is uncertain whether such an operation can succeed. This question of success has always depended on how the United States would respond to a Chinese attack. China is now convinced that it is unlikely to see a U.S. president more indifferent toward Taiwan and more unlikely to intervene militarily in the Taiwan Strait than Donald Trump. The recently released U.S. National Security Strategy, which prioritizes the Western Hemisphere and proclaims a “predisposition to non-interventionism,” supports this perception since it forgoes any designation of China as a threat or a challenge to the United States. The Trump administration’s mostly muted response to China’s December 2025 military exercise encircling Taiwan was also encouraging. Then, in early January, Trump’s decision to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro confirmed the United States’ Western Hemisphere priorities.

Yet this shift in U.S. strategic priorities—and its approach to China—may be present only for the next three years. The shift could even fade after the U.S. midterm elections in November this year if the Democrats take control of Congress and Trump’s base loses enough steam. The window of opportunity is therefore limited: China may never again have a moment when Washington is so reluctant to intervene on Taiwan’s behalf.

Traditionally, China has played the long game based on the logic that once it surpassed the United States in economic and military might, it could naturally prevent the United States from defending Taiwan. Such an optimistic vision peaked during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic when China was convinced that because “the east is rising and the west is declining,” as the common CCP phrase terms it, it would soon be able to force the United States out of the region. But the past six or so years of great-power competition has demonstrated that China’s desired endgame might not transpire as soon as it hoped. Instead of waiting indefinitely, China is realizing that Washington’s current indifference may offer the best opportunity to realize its unification dream.

Russia’s war in Ukraine also shapes China’s window of opportunity. The war has been a major distraction for U.S. grand strategy: the Biden administration was unable to focus on China the way it wanted to, and the second Trump administration has been pulled from its desired focus on homeland security and the Western Hemisphere. As long as U.S. attention and resources are bogged down in Europe, it is less likely that Washington would want to confront China in the Pacific. But if the Ukraine war draws to a close, China’s advantage could disappear.

Trump’s actions have also boosted China’s position by affecting Taiwan’s domestic politics. In 2025, Trump imposed 20 percent tariffs on Taiwan; in the trade deal just reached, Taiwan agreed to invest at least $250 billion in chip production in the United States in exchange for lowering tariff rates to 15 percent. His conciliatory approach to China and indifference to Taiwan as a democracy, meanwhile, raised broad concerns that he could be seeking a grand bargain with China that could involve trading economic benefits for endorsing China’s position on Taiwan. These moves have hurt the ruling Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan and its leader, Lai, whom Beijing distrusts and believes is promoting Taiwanese independence. Last summer, Lai supported a grassroots effort to recall legislators from the opposition Kuomintang, but it failed, leading to a further drop in Lai’s popularity. The changing public opinion in Taiwan gives Beijing hope that the Taiwanese people are finally abandoning the pro-independence DPP and may even embrace unification.

At this critical juncture, any Taiwanese action that is perceived as provocative could trigger a major reaction from China, as seen in December, when the United States announced an $11.1 billion arms deal with Taiwan and, 11 days later, China launched a military exercise that simulated a blockade of Taiwan. Despite its large size, the arms deal is seen by the Chinese more as Trump’s promotion of U.S. defense industry interests and less as a commitment to defend Taiwan. Its December exercise, the largest yet of its kind, was the seventh major military exercise since former U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022—all of which have escalated China’s rehearsal for a decisive campaign.

 

Cost-Benefit Analysis

The CCP and its leaders are risk-averse by default. In fact, the bigger the stake, the more conservative they are. On something as significant as Taiwan, they would not decide to act lightly. Before they make any moves, they need to have confident answers to two questions: Is the army ready to fight and win? And is the country ready to handle the consequences?

The common wisdom is that the People’s Liberation Army is clearly not prepared to fight the United States. Xi has overseen rounds of purges of senior military leaders, which have undermined the institution’s morale and spirit. Senior officers fear for their own future, which makes it an undesirable time to test their resolve and capabilities with such a critical mission. In particular, the purged generals from the 31st Army Corps are seen as the ones with the most knowledge and experience in preparing for a Taiwan operation, and their removal may have damaged that historical know-how.

But the question of the PLA’s readiness is relative to whom the PLA will fight against. If U.S. intervention is not in the cards, the PLA can easily outmatch Taiwan’s forces. The PLA boasts more than two million active military personnel, in contrast with Taiwan’s 170,000 troops. China’s defense budget in 2025 was $247 billion, whereas Taiwan’s defense budget in 2026, after a massive 16 percent increase, is still only $31 billion. Taiwan passed an additional $40 billion special defense budget in 2025, but it will cover only the eight years between 2026 and 2033. The disparity in military forces is so large that Taiwan cannot catch up. Trump has not commented on whether the United States would defend Taiwan, but the assumption of U.S. intervention is much weaker than before.

Whether China can stomach the external consequences of an invasion also hinges on how the United States reacts. If Beijing thinks that, after an attack on Taiwan, the United States and its allies would impose crippling economic sanctions on China, the costs would give policymakers pause and they would likely wait to fight another day. But, in its recent trade war with Trump, Beijing effectively used rare earth and tariff retaliation to force Washington’s hands. After this victory, Beijing may see any potential U.S. sanctions as moderate while other countries’ ability to rally and punish China is far less concerning. In Trump’s attempt to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, meanwhile, Trump has also accommodated Russia’s territorial claims. Since China sees Taiwan as rightly and squarely within its sphere of influence, this has also been encouraging.

This is not to say that China will attack Taiwan immediately: there are no visible signs of troop mobilization, logistical preparation, or government policy changes that point to an imminent attack. Nonetheless, in the past, Beijing has delayed action on Taiwan because it knows it cannot risk action that would fail, and it felt confident about its strategy for “peaceful reunification”—that the rise of China would eventually make Taiwan want to unify with it. That calculation is now changing—both because the past several years of great-power competition has shaken Beijing’s timeline about its ascent and because its confidence about a forceful bid for Taiwan is growing. Washington must realize that the current combination of factors offers what Beijing could perceive as its best opportunity to take Taiwan.

 

 

For updates click hompage here