Actually, Chinese don't have a chance in hell of taking Taiwan any time soon.
Battle for Taiwan would be an amphibious assault. The history shows amphibious assaults required the following :
1. Sufficient Amphibious Transportation capacity
2. Complete Air Superiority of the Theater of Battle
Chinese at this point do not have enough shipping capacity to mount an invasion that could suceed. They've been adding tonnage to their fleet like mad lately, however, they'll need another 7-10 years worth.
In the air superiority arena, they're even further behind. They're trying to compensate with a large number of medium range ballistic missiles pointed at the island. Their best chance is a surprise strike on the Taiwan airfields where the F-16 there get destroyed on the ground. Barring that, even if US Pacific Fleet didn't intervene, Chinese could only have contested airspace over their invasion fleet - not even close to achieving superiority. Hence, the vehement Chinese opposition to the proposed AEGIS sale to Taiwan - the radar system could server as critical early warning and tracking node in the Taiwanese defense network that would completely make a suprise destruction of Taiwanese air force an impossibility.
Without the air superiority over the straigths, Chinese troop carriers trying to cross would quickly go to the watery graves. If the pacific fleet's carrier battlegroup(s)intervened, Chinese are looking at completely hostile airspace over their invasion fleet - buncha very expensive scrap metal. I wouldn't worry about Chinese invasion of Taiwan any time soon. I'm worried about Chinese invasion of Russia. Russians have been bulding up their nuclear arsenal not because they're scared of us - they're scared of the Chinese. There's already 20 mil illegal chinese inside Russia. Only thing that's stopping the Chinese from "going to the help of their oppressed countrymen" is the fact Russians would nuke them as the first regiment crossed the Russian border.
>>>"Battle for Taiwan would be an amphibious assault."
What if they are already there?
What if they just fly in on commercial airlines?
What if the large number of those people in Taiwan that support merging with China go along with the program and form an internal core to help the Communist Chinese that have been infilitrating over the last 5 years?
Taiwan may just quickly surrender, rather than defend themselves and thus see massive destruction of its infrastructure.
The conditions in Taiwan are not the same as they were in the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's. There are a lot of Chinese in Taiwan (about 15 %) that came over from mainland China after World War II that are incensed over the strong rhetoric and treatment of the original Chinese in Taiwan (about 85 %). This 85 % has taken back leadership only in the last 8 years or so. The Chang Kai Shek party is out, the original Chinese are in and there's a fierce internal conflict going on.
If Taiwan surrendered, it wouldn't be nice if they had tons of sophisticated US weapons to hand over to their new masters.
We shouldn't get involved unless all of Taiwan is on the same page: fight to the death. If that's the case, then we should go back to our original deal: defense of Taiwan. Until then, we should just continue our rhetoric... and get the currencies to float to slow down the Chinese juggernaut.
Hoppy
It's more like 2-3 million Chinese, there really aren't that many place they are welcome, not amongst the Russians or the native population who remember that before the Cossaks came and settled peacefully with them, the Chinese in those border areas were forcing them to become Chinese.
As for Russia, China can get to the oil only two ways: through Vladivastok, around the coast and into Siberia (northern), or through Kazakstan and between the bordering mountains in southern Siberia and the Urals. To go straight is 2k km of forested mountains where almost all roads run E-W not N-S.