It has always been and remains a when not if issue...
In 2023, then-CIA Director William Burns cited U.S. intelligence, saying Xi had ordered the PLA to be ready for invading Taiwan by 2027.
In an email interview with The Epoch Times, retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel Lawrence Sellin said Beijing has so far “pursued a ‘salami-slice strategy’ using a series of many small actions to produce a much larger result.”
The regime appears to be reluctant to launch an attack or a blockade because such actions “would cause an immediate strong reaction from the United States and regional powers opposed to China’s unlawful expansionism, possibly provoking a major war,” he said, adding, “but that could change.”
Last year, Yuan Hongbing, a former law professor at China’s prestigious Peking University, who has connections in the CCP’s upper echelon, said party leaders were advised to establish a strategy to “solve the Taiwan issue by 2027” in a report penned by top PLA experts.
According to Yuan, the report described the goal as a “political guarantee” for the CCP’s 21st National Congress, which is set for 2027, to go smoothly, suggesting CCP elites have banked the party’s legitimacy on absorbing the self-ruled island.
Meanwhile, the recent disappearance of the PLA’s third in command, second-ranked vice chairman of the CCP’s Central Military Commission, Gen. He Weidong, has led to speculations on whether Xi is losing grip on power, and whether a coup would accelerate or hamper the CCP’s plan to invade Taiwan.
On how the United States should react, Perry said anything that hampers the CCP’s oppression of the Chinese people and slows the spread of communism around the world is “a good thing,” but the United States can’t “just sit back and hope that that occurs organically.”https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-must-be-ready-2027-chinese-invasion-taiwan-rep-perryI think there is a lot of pressure on them to invade earlier rather than later...and this is a clear imperative to get the Ukraine BS over as soon as possible.
