1. China does not have the capability to invade Taiwan. Power projection is HARD, especially moving troops over waters that might not be in one's control.
2. China has the capability to destroy Taiwan merely by weight of conventional ballistic missiles. China has LOTS of short & med range ballistic missiles. Enough to swamp any missile defense on Taiwan, IIRC.
3. The closer to China one gets, the less tenable is a strike on their mainland. China has LOTS of air defense hardware.
4. Question with any commie block hardware is: How much of it works at crunch time? At Stalingrad, for every Russian tank that made it to the battlefield, one was lost along the way to mechanical breakdown.
5. An attack by USA on China would likely end in a debacle, but an attack by China on US & allies in the neighborhood likely would be a debacle for China, despite China's first move advantage.
6. China handed major world powers the knife with which to cut its throat by building the Three Gorges Dam. Take that out, and China ENDS as a major power for a few centuries.
