[AIG]

There's the military aspect and then there's the economic aspect. Taiwan's economic lifeblood, its hi-tech businesses, are moving to the mainland of their own free will and hurting Taiwan's economic vitality. It's doubtful these firms will ever return. It makes an invasion less necessary when all these Taiwanese businesses are moving to the mainland and hurting Taiwan itself and its ability to pay for its future defense budgets. The migration of these businesses hurts Taiwan's future economic viability as an export-based economy, which is vulnerable also because it does not have much of a self-sustained domestic market in anything.

[Jhoffa_]

There's the military aspect and then there's the economic aspect.

You are overlooking the nazi aspect.

The chineese ruling class are quite possibly the most arrogant race on the planet. They are self centered and they will not stop until their rogues are brought under control, imho.

Personally, I could care less about trade.. if it comes down to selling out taiwan then that's not acceptable. If they re-unify on their own, from economic pressures, as you alude to then it's on their own head.

[Aedammair]

You have to give China's leaders their due (historical and present), because it seems to me that their permutation of Marxism, into mercantile Marxism, is what allowed their brand of Communism to economically flourish, while still retaining extremely muscular political control.

I don't think they ever bought into the stupidity of Marxist economics like the Russians did. The caliber of China's peasantry was much higher than that of Russia's, both in intellect and work ethic, and I think that is one of the reasons they've made large scale Communism (even their singular, and somewhat doctrine negating mercantile brand) work.

Tito's Yugoslavia was much the same. He basically told Stalin that if he wanted to be assured of Yugoslavia's "cooperation" in his hegemonic pursuits, he'd better mind his own economic affairs. And Stalin had no choice but to comply.