[Terpfen]

"So what happens next? What do they gain by doing this, since Taiwan doesn't exactly have a pile of resource wealth that makes it a worthwhile military target?"

Taiwan is a major center of electronics technology and manufacturing. Most of the parts in your computer were manufactured in Taiwan. If the ChiComms get Taiwan, not only will their economy expand by leaps and bounds, but they can seriously impact the high-tech trade.

[Poohbah]

Taiwan is a major center of electronics technology and manufacturing. Most of the parts in your computer were manufactured in Taiwan. If the ChiComms get Taiwan, not only will their economy expand by leaps and bounds, but they can seriously impact the high-tech trade.

And, of course, they will capture all of the manufacturing and laboratory facilities intact after an intense shooting war through the streets of Taipei.

[GOP_1900AD]

Actually, I am in the biz and wanted to make a slight correction. Most of those Taiwanese companies who build computers now have mostly R&D and adminstrative operations on Taiwan, and perhaps low volume new product lines there, however their highest volume lines, due to labor cost and anti competitive domestic content rules on the part of the PRC, are over on the mainland already. In other words, with the issuance of a single command from Beijing, within a few hours time, the major production capacity would be "owned" lock stock and barrel by the CCP and their designates. Marx wrote of seizing the means of production. Deng Xiao Ping, and his followers studied this well.