Beijing's Taiwan Playbook Isn't Invasion—It's Persuading Taiwan to Give Up Without a Fight
While Washington debates how to defend Taiwan militarily, Beijing appears to be running a different play entirely: convincing Taiwanese politicians and voters that resistance is pointless. According to the Wall Street Journal, Xi Jinping sees the Trump era as a 'rare window' to pull Taiwan into China's orbit not with missiles, but with political seduction—and if it works, the U.S. could lose a strategic anchor in the Pacific without a single shot fired.
Bottom Line
Beijing is testing whether it can achieve through Taiwan's own politics what it might never risk achieving through war. The danger isn't a sudden attack—it's a slow erosion of Taiwanese confidence that the island's autonomy is defensible, timed to a moment when Beijing believes Washington's attention and commitments are negotiable. Deterrence that only counts ships and missiles will miss this entirely.