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Notes -
The PRC's doing another round of drills around Taiwan.
There's a real possibility that this one is the ruse of war that the others were meant to make believable; all the stars have basically aligned. The charm offensive failed in 2019-20 with the Darth Vader stunt on Hong Kong, there's a shitshow of a US election campaign in progress (two assassination attempts plus a disqualification attempt), the US President is significantly demented, William Lai got elected Taiwanese President earlier this year, and October's a good month in terms of weather conditions for amphibious assault, plus Beijing's adversaries are re-arming and Biden will be gone before April so that puts some degree of time pressure on them.
I wouldn't panic just yet; even if this is the big one (and it may not be), my guess is that they won't open WWIII with a nuclear first strike on CONUS/Europe/Australia (pre-emptive ASAT use to wipe out US satellites - and probably destroy all other low-earth-orbit satellites as collateral damage - is a possibility, though, so you may lose any communications dependent on those). But anything that you might have trouble doing later - beating the rush to buy bottled water/non-perishable food/aluminium foil/iodide tablets or whatever (not all of those are applicable to all of us), or maybe starting construction of a fallout shelter - this is your advance warning. As far as Guam/Japan/South Korea go, there may be pre-emptive missile attacks on US bases, but I still wouldn't expect cities nuked as part of the opening move so my advice is mostly the same. But if you're in Taiwan itself, I'd suggest getting out; if this goes hot there'll likely be a blockade attempt by the PLAN, so you may not be able to get out later.
To be clear, I'm more worried now than I've been since at least 2017 (the Trump-Kim yelling match) - and I was in Melbourne then, and thus personally at risk. I was mildly nervous back in April of this year, but you'll note that I didn't make a post like this then.
Remember that your life is worth a lot more than a few hundred bucks; it is rational to take action even if you rate the chance of nuclear war as "small but significant". Remember also that it is good to survive; while QoL might suck in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear war, we'll recover, and if you have any ideological goals you will in almost all cases help them more if you're still around to advocate and act for them (note that if you're in the military or can otherwise help win the war, that's a worthy cause; I'm not advising desertion). That said, good luck to us all and I hope I'm worried over nothing.
m9m out.
EDIT: The drills seem to have completed; we seem to be safe for now.
It's extremely unlikely that there will be a full blown war over Taiwan at all, in my opinion. The Chinese have no need to risk it all to secure territorial integrity, and as other commenters have suggested, there's no rush for China either. Economic warfare (cessation of PRC-ROC trade rather than outright blockade) is more likely. AFAICT the mainline scenario is where the US continues to onshore the useful productive capacity of Taiwan (chip fab), with possible human capital absorption as well. Eventually, the value of Taiwan for the US will decrease to the point where it isn't worth going to war, and a Hong Kong style handover will begin. This would disrupt the island chain strategy of course, but the reality is that as the Taiwanese economy becomes increasingly reliant on the PRC, and the value of it to the US decreases, there's only one likely direction of travel. Plenty of unknowns but I'd put a 40% likelihood on this kind of scenario playing out in the next 5-10 years or so, much more likely than a hot war involving the 2 superpowers.
Agree, China doesn’t want all the most valuable chip production to be in Taiwan. If they could press a button tomorrow and turn Taiwan into worthless farmland inhabited by a few peasants they’d do it in a heartbeat. They are clearly willing to wait for production to slowly move elsewhere (both to the US and China proper) and then to move when the island is no longer strategically as valuable to the West.
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China has possibly the most credible no-first-use policy of all the nuclear powers. They traditionally maintained a very weak deterrent and only recently started to get serious about MAD. As far as I know, they are still debating about going up to launch-on-warning, which the US and Russia have been at for ages. It would be illogical (and very out of character) for them to launch a nuclear first strike when they're outgunned at least 10:1. The US nuclear deterrent is very hard to crack, the meat of it is all in submarines. Going counterforce (targeting launchers) would do very little and invite a devastating counter-attack, going countervalue (targeting cities) would result in massive and disproportionate retaliation.
I suspect that China's advantages are still increasing, it makes sense to keep waiting and reduce the costs and risks of any war. The US Navy will keep shrinking till 2027. The Chinese Navy grows continuously. Their nuclear forces are growing rapidly. Western munitions stockpiles will remain depleted for some time and it's not like US munitions production could be anywhere close to Chinese munitions production, considering the sizes of the industrial bases involved. India remains weak.
The US seems to be increasingly distracted by the Middle East situation, further dispersing strength away from Asia.
China is pulling ahead in most scientific fields. More and more ethnic Chinese scientists are migrating back to China.
They're producing more and more energy domestically, though imports are higher than ever. Huge stockpiles of food and fuel have been built up. The sanctions weapon seems to have bounced off Russia and hit Europe, there is reason to think it will be ineffective against China as well (and/or cause incredible pain to the West): https://en.thebell.io/inside-russias-budget-taxes-borrowing-reserves/
I'm frankly staggered that this anti-Putin outlet is putting out these numbers and trying to spin them as bad news for Russia. Likewise, Chinese real disposable income per capita keeps rising at a pretty respectable 4-5%. That's pretty good economic performance. The US is at 2%, most of Europe is below 2% and Australia has sunk to 2018 levels.
Anyway, China may expect further positive surprises in the future. If the US gets dragged into a struggle with Iran, if the political crisis in America heightens further, if Ukraine goes under and Russia ties down more troops in Europe...
The biggest uncertainty for China is some major advancement in AI where the US seems to be retaining an edge.
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I am extremely happy that, living like a mile from the heart of British government, MAD would hopefully mean a fast and relatively painless death, vaporized after a Russian nuke hits Buckingham Palace or Downing St. I have no heart for life after the apocalypse and do not particularly care to suffer it; if it happens, I’m happy leaving the future to hardier people.
Yeah same, if China nuked the U.S., San Diego would likely be one of the first targets (what with the Naval bases and shipyards) so I and everyone I care about would be deleted before we knew what hit us. I too am unfit for the post-apocalyptic lifestyle.
Isn’t China’s nuclear arsenal quite a bit smaller than the US and Russia’s, so their targeting would be relatively limited by necessity?
I mean, I’m assuming that San Diego would have very significant military value, such that it would be a worthwhile target for a nuke no matter how limited their supply is. Perhaps I’m overvaluing it as a target.
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Depends on how you count. E.g. https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2022/12/07/china-may-have-surpassed-us-in-number-of-nuclear-warheads-on-icbms/
I'd take that guesstimation with a large grain of salt, but China likely has at least 100 nuclear ICBMs that could reach the USA. Supposing an 80% failure/interception rate, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops.
I'm guessing those 100 nukes are not targeted evenly across the country. DC, Cheyenne mountain, and Pearl Harbour probably absorb the lion's share. So, yeah, in agreement there.
Oddly enough, even DC might be secondary: I'd assume the Naval shipyards would be the primary targets. If the US can't repair/maintain/rearm ships (no concern with building, since modern ships take forever), the US can't project forces across the Pacific, and is therefore almost entirely impotent.
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I've said before: as long as China is ascendant there is little reason to force the issue today. Prior comment here. So the assumption that China is going to act aggressively now depends on the idea that Chinese leadership thinks that things are going to get worse for China rather than better. I'm not going to rehash prior points about "faked" Chinese economic and population statistics and HBD, but looking at the headlines today:
-- Has the PRC seen news that makes them think the USA is going to get stronger in the near future? While Biden is an uninspiring leader, I don't see much improvement on the horizon. Kamala is singularly inexperienced and disrespected. Trump is chaotic, and while he's no fan of China he also isn't going to be in favor of tremendous foreign aid to Taiwan. If Trump succeeds in reshoring manufacturing, decoupling in any material way is ten years or more away. In the short term, I don't see tremendous upside for the USA.
-- Is the news about China's economy worse than we think? Maybe this is the big one, or at least some people in China think it might be? I've been reading the China Property Bubble Bursting story for what feels like five years now, but maybe it's actually happening? Does the PRC, related to faked stats in population etc, feel that their economy is about to pull back in such a way that they won't have the capacity to invade?
-- Is there an unknown unknown in Chinese culture that I'm not aware of? Some crisis within the leadership or population that makes this necessary?
-- Totally unfounded speculative conspiracy theory: China makes the move now because they've made a deal with Trump, by which Trump agrees to publicly oppose any US intervention and allow the annexation to happen in exchange for some deal once he's in office. Biden would not be able to act practically speaking if Trump put the kibosh on it, without Republican cooperation action in congress is impossible, and if Trump spoke out hard enough you start to worry about officers in the Navy following orders. That's one unique weakness of this moment: Trump wouldn't even have as much power to hand it to them after the election.
-- More speculation: China has some wunderwaffen they feel will allow them to win the conflict, and wants to act before it is discovered or countered by the USA.
-- Speculative AI timelines?
Any other reasons to do this today, rather than continue to wait and watch?
Well put. My read is that currently the US is eager for a war around Taiwan, not China, and so significant US escalation is the prerequisite for war. Repeat of Ukraine the ideal scenario, war to the last Taiwanese male and intact piece of infrastructure, no real interest in Taiwanese victory.
Maybe US will make some hard to miss, public move - I'll start worrying then. Maybe it will be a threshold of minor moves only someone closely following the region would notice - I'm doomed to be taken by surprise then.
The U.S. does not want a war, either. No no no no no. Not without some radical changes to infrastructure and onshoring.
The risk is that one side tries to exploit that unwillingness but overestimates it.
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A few things:
-They don’t want to do it while Trump Is president. Trump’s reputation is different in China. He’s not considered a hapless buffoon. He’s kind of a Vladimir Putin figure. They don’t like him but they see him as extremely ruthless and cunning.
-China was worried by what they saw during the Ukraine War. Blitz offensives have become a thing of the past. China doesn’t want to give Taiwan another decade to turn themselves into an even spinier hedgehog. Especially since there’s a bipartisan consensus in America to give them tons and tons of weaponry.
-America is uniquely distracted and overstretched at this point. Ukraine is taking up a lot of energy and weapons. No matter how the Ukraine war ends, it will eventually end, and America will likely be free to finally focus all its energy on the Pacific. The Middle East is also exploding, and could end up in an a full open war between Iran and Israel. China has its best military shot if it goes now.
-America is weak and divided, but there’s no guarantee it’s going to stay that way. America has had plenty of stunning comebacks in its history and it’s very possible that 2030s America is much stronger and more United than it is now.
-Peter Zeihan’s frantic proclamations of imminent Chinese collapse are overstated, but China will probably have a weaker hand in ten to twenty years. And aging population, fewer expendable young men, a slower economy.
-Taiwan’s attitude has been hardening up for years now. They increasingly see themselves as as their own separate political and cultural thing. Peaceful reunification is going to get harder, as would any military occupation.
-The AI race: military action against Taiwan would at least temporarily or permanently knock out a lot of America’s best chip fabs, and possibly allow China to actually take them. Either would give China a considerable leg up.
Huh, really? Where'd you find this out?
One of the biggest mistakes Western China watchers make is hyper focusing on the opinions of like 20m ultra online netizens who regularly discuss international geopolitics, an extreme minority of the Chinese public.
But what does that mean for the above question, exactly?
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Biden is actually demented, which in case of war will immediately trigger a crisis over whether to 25A him in favour of Harris. That is a distraction during the crucial first few days. If they stick with Biden, he's not going to be up to the job, which will hamper the US somewhat. If they make Harris Acting President, she probably hasn't been briefed on things to a sufficient extent (as she's been focussing on the campaign), which will also hamper the US somewhat until she gets up to speed (or until the election, if she doesn't abort campaigning in order to concentrate). All of that's a plus for Beijing versus going during a pre-existing Harris presidency (at least up until 2028, and to some degree even then).
They are starting to take reputational damage by not going for Taiwan. Entirely self-inflicted by their propaganda, of course, but the fact that it's their own fault doesn't change their incentives. I don't think that issue is at crisis levels yet (if they don't make the 100-year deadline they're in trouble, but that isn't for another 25 years), although their failure on COVID might make them anxious for a victory.
I mean, this isn't very relevant, but on this front I suppose there is the possibility of using TikTok/ByteDance to try to influence the US public away from intervention, which will (mostly) go away when the ban comes into effect.
XJP's ego (East Asians live a long time, but he's no spring chicken and he wants this to be his achievement).
(To be clear, none of this makes it a certainty. Like I said, this might not be the big one. I'm just noting stuff in the categories you asked for.)
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I broadly agree, but I'd like to add one point:
-- Speculative drone warfare timelines? Ukraine has shown us what you can do with a couple of months, a couple of jetskis and a couple of tons of explosives. Maybe China is afraid of what Taiwan/western MICs can do with years and billions in funding. How do you blockade an island, let alone run an amphibious assault against one, that has thousands of maritime suicide drones attacking in swarms? Drones that are better at diving, much higher range, higher speed and more autonomous than what we've seen in the Black Sea?
Surely blockading an island is much easier thanks to these drones, rather than the other way around? Chinese can swarm any ship going towards the island with the said drones. Cherry on top is that vast majority of the quad drones used in Ukraine by both sides is made in China.
I get what you mean, but the Chinese navy is purpose built to blockade the island anyway, and innovation that is making this easier isn't really helping them much. Instead, it moves the power balance towards parity in favor of Taiwan, who now will have a much easier time attacking ships than they had before. At the same time, it is of course also moving the power balance from a US carrier group towards China - for the same reason. And sure, I have no doubts that China's drone capabilities will be (or most likely, already are) top of the line. The thing with drones is just that offense is vastly easier than defense.
I also think that marine drones (as in: relatively large drones that are swimming and/or diving) will have a bigger impact on the Taiwan situation that quadrotors will have.
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I don't think the PLA Navy is ready yet. I don't think they'll be ready for a few years. But with the ongoing rearmament of Japan and Australia as well as a growing awareness in Taiwan and the USA, there may be a threshold where China decides that future gains in readiness are not worth waiting for given the potential of increased western capabilities to resist.
But in any case I highly doubt that this war would ever go nuclear. China simply does not have the nuclear stockpile to destroy the US; we're not in a MAD situation here so neither side has the incentive to strike first, or strike at all.
Is it even trending towards "readiness"? Admittedly that's a moving target against adversaries who are also preparing thenselves, but as seen in Ukraine it may be a question of whether Taiwan can build anti-ship missiles faster than China can build
targetsships, not ship-to-ship. A blockade would be terrible if it could be maintained, but Taiwan is well-positioned to at least deter shipping to most of China's ports alone, and last I checked both are pretty heavy importers of food. It'd be pretty messy, even before considering the actions of the rest of the West.Not betting heavily on Taiwan, but if they chose to fight I don't think it'd be easy to dislodge them.
I think the pressing issue is 'how do the F16s hold up to Chinese planes?' and 'how good the Chinese Air Force is compared to the Taiwanese?'. I believe that attempting to do a naval invasion without complete air superiority in the modern day is a messy and painful form of suicide. The carriers won't be enough, so they'll have to sorty from the mainland...
Even if China is weak at sea, if they can blow up ship decks and dockyards with bombs and missiles from aircraft, enough marines can potentially make a landing. The entire issue may be settled by the success or failure of PLA saboteurs in Taiwanese airfields.
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Anti-ship missiles (and where they launch from) are targets every bit as much as ships are. China wouldn't sit idly by while Taiwan shot down all its ships, and it's likely their opening salvo would substantially degrade Taiwan's ability to launch missiles.
Embargo-wise, neither China nor Taiwan are going to be doing much commerce anyway in the event of a war, but they're both calorie self-sufficient. Energy is the trickier bit, but China produces more of its own energy and also has a couple hundred thousand barrels/day of overland capacity.
I'd agree anti-ship missiles can be targets, but the Ukraine example suggests they can be a pretty potent force multiplier for an outgunned navy. Did any analysts seriously predict that neither side would have firm control of the Black Sea? Is China equipping it's flotilla with adequate anti-missile defenses? Taiwan also has submarines and torpedos.
Not convinced it's a guaranteed win, but it's certainly a bit of an unknown.
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Striking before they’re ready is a known problem for irredentist authoritarians.
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Keep in mind Taiwan elected a new President and just gave a speech last week about resisting annexation, I believe. The other possibility is this is China trying to publicly remind him and the public of who he's dealing with.
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No jitters in financial markets as yet, which is encouraging; not even a blip on TSMC's share price.
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Way to undercut your credibility, lol.
2017 was practically an archetypical example of American ethnocentricism of thinking their internal political squabbles reflect how other key actors view the world. No one who remotely paid attention to Korea for any amount of time was particularly surprised by rhetoric that wasn't matched by mobilization by North or South, and no one whose seen a 'don't hold me back, bro' moment of bar-posturing would have missed the caveats on both sides were using throughout. Variants of 'If you attack me, then you will regret it' were blatantly (and politically) being misrepresented and misreported by actors whose motive was to inspire panic and fear in the audience.
Meanwhile, in Korea, coverage of the 'crisis' had far more of a 'wow, the American media are talking' tone than one of concern... if they covered it at all. Certainly the South Koreans weren't mobilizing their society for a conflict.
How and why the Americans would wage a war against North Korea without South Korean support or ascent was, of course, rarely if ever raised and never addressed beyond possible dismissals of 'the South Koreans don't have a choice.'
Well, you're certainly demonstrating the classic failure mode of utilitarians, who struggle to conceptualize or deal with conceptual infinities and start doing irrational things on the basis of existential dread spirals.
No, the Chinese are not about to try and cold-rush Taiwan, or try to start a war via blockade that would be publicly jumped on by both US political parties for electioneering purposes. No, there isn't any particular grounds for panic-buying resiliency goods beyond the universal basis to have a stockpile for emergencies. No, the nukes (and the satellites) are not about to fall.
You are doomposting. Go back to bed and sleep it off.
What's your take on the likelihood of a "soft blockade"/quarantine/enhanced customs inspections? How would Taiwan and allies respond?
Seems to me to be more in line with China's grey zone approaches so far, and it has more opportunities for escalation/de-escalation.
In the current week / imminent days, as the OP fantasized? Below negligible, particularly without a corresponding buildup of forces or chinese domestic narrative campaign.
If the OP wanted to say this was a drill normalizing conditions for an attempt to establish a blockade, sure. And whatever- that's not actually a blockade. But that wasn't the position.
In current week / month / year, October 2024?
The Biden Administration publicly identifies the effort, denounces, and announces an intent to break the blockade while moving multiple carrier groups towards the region. Harris issues as-fiery-as-she-can speaches on the need for American strength and unity against the Chinese threat, while being conspicuously present in official photos of Biden and the National Security aparratus taking response, even as a new rush of adds characterize the Democrats as the party of defense and appeal to the neocons once more while social media sites like Reddit begin to mock Trump for bonespurs and Vietnam avoidance. The Republicans, in turn, offer full throttled support (for the Troops, not Biden), seek to out-hawk Biden even as Republican propaganda elevates Biden's China-corruption links and attacks Waltz on his links and otherwise claims this as the vindication of every objection to Ukrainian aid (regardless of how little of it would be relevant or useful in the current week/month/year).
Taiwan and allies quietly watch in horror and try to silently wave down the Americans for overreacting to yet another Chinese drill where the US overreaction might increase Chinese counter-reaction in ways that the Chinese will continue doing even after American attention drifts away a few news cycles later.
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You have the right to ignore my warning if you so wish. As I said, I might look paranoid in a few days.
(In case I don't, though, no memory-hole for you.)
Not only am I ignoring your warning, I am recommending for your own health- mental as well as possibly physical- to get some rest.
You are doom posting. Go sleep it off.
FYI:
Went to bed Monday morning around 4AM. Got up about 3:30 PM. Posted the top-level at 9:10 PM. Went to bed Tuesday morning at 3AM. Got up around 1:30 PM. Posting this at 2:45 PM. I do not retract my concerns.
I'm a night owl, not insane from lack of sleep.
And yet, Taiwan remains unblockaded, the nukes are not flying, and the satellites are not falling. Instead, in the last 48 hours, the Chinese ships returned, nuclear sabers were not rattled, and one of the most impressive technical feats of a decade has foreshadowed an even greater resilience of the space economy.
Yesterday was not the start of a war. There was no particular reason to believe that yesterday was the start of a war. That the many various reasons why not were beyond to are what demonstrated a lack of basis for your judgement and justification for fears, much as your lack of perception in 2017 led you to be 'nervous' and believe yourself 'at risk' during a propaganda cycle. The world does not function as you think it does, and the way you think it does is a result of fear mongering you decided to try and spread to others.
You are not charged with insanity. You are charged with a lack of sound judgement.
You seem to have been correct about this incident.
Is there some reason I should go with the hypothesis "Dean knows what the CPC is up to better than I do" rather than the hypothesis "Dean is a Rock Cultist who was right this time"? I'm open to persuasion of the former, but there are lots of Rock Cultists, including many smug Rock Cultists.
My model of the PLA drills around Taiwan is that one of them is not going to be a drill, and the rest are both practice runs and decoys to make people think the real one is another drill and thus gain tactical advantage. To guess which ones might be real, I look at various indications regarding their chances of success and consider whether enough of them point in the direction of "this is the best shot they'll get for a while". March/April/October is one sign, since those are the best months for amphibious operations (though they do have other options). Unusual/temporary weakness in US leadership is another. Unusual/temporary weakness in Western militaries is another. Mood in Taiwan is another, as I certainly accept that the PRC would rather take Taiwan peacefully, though this one's basically stuck in the "on" position at this point since it's now been years since the crash of unificationist sentiment to lizardman following the Hong Kong fiasco (i.e. they have had time to plan and prepare to follow "non-peaceful means" now that the "possibilities for a peaceful re-unification [are] completely exhausted"; quotes are from the PRC's Anti-Secession Law).
The 2024 US election cycle was predictable as a shitshow since 2021, so I predicted well in advance that October 2024 would be a solid time to invade. Biden going senile (and not seeking re-election) and the West re-arming due to Ukraine also create the potential of a temporary vulnerability. So I considered it plausible that this might be the real one; this is the best chance they have for a while (until 2027 or so, unless something goes very wrong in the USA, but even if it does that won't be predictable so to be as good a shot it'd have to be very bad). I knew that they might not do it, and I made that quite clear.
Vague mockery is not going to convince me. You have to be able to spot and explain a problem in the above argument if you are going to convince me that we didn't just get lucky.
Sure. Let's start with 'pattern recognition.'
This is not the first time China has conducted a military exercise simulating a blockade of Taiwan. In all exercises simulating a blockade to date, Taiwan has not, in fact, been blockaded. Therefore, there is no causal relationship justifying a claim that a Chinese military exercise simulating a blockade of Taiwan is evidence of imminent blockade of Taiwan, as there must be other distinguishing features for the former to lead to the later. This takes even more meaning when there is a separate pattern of China conducting threatening exercises, but no attack or blockade, in protest to some Taiwan official statement or another. Again, distinguishing factors needs to be observed to justify claims of deviating from historical patterns of behavior.
We could go further with the advanced concept of backwards reasoning. If China were making a deliberate decision to initiated a military blockade of Taiwan, then what would we expect to see China do in the context of a deliberate leadup to war that would not be seen in the historical pattern of exercises-that-were-not-starts-of-war. This might include, for example, a pre-event propaganda campaign providing initial narrative buildup or international legitimization for the immeninent actions, particularly propaganda emphasizing the historical nature of rectifying the century of humiliation. It might include the mobilization of the Chinese navy, which is to say the social media reflections of the recall of shore leaves, the noticeable trends of all the Chinese naval groups readjusting their movements to start adopting both reinforcement of a blockade and preparing to intercept any efforts by regional naval actors to block it. It might include things like minimizing sanction exposure risk by a sharp withdrawal of PRC state-controlled economic funds from western financial institutions, demands made of the Taiwanese, and threats against external intrusion.
We would expect, in other words, to see actual effort correspond to the sort of actions that would be taken to launch a blockade, and not just the adjacent fleet sailing around for a day not actually stopping anyone going to Taiwan.
We can go further if you'd like, but it'd be punching more than a little down. As an alternative, I propose we let you memory hole this oops of a catastrophizing and then slightly more embarrassing attempt to reserve the right that you told me so.
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Based off of Dean's posting history and areas of knowledge he does have potentially relevant domain specific knowledge.
Other indicators (financial markets, lack of U.S. ramp up, etc.) indicate no reason to be worried as of yet.
Good news: China is a more competent adversary and isn't going to light the world (and themselves) on fire. Well bad news but good news here.
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Why would China be willing to go for WW3 and destroy much of the planet just to win Taiwan?
Imperial Japanese imagined that Americans were weak and would not choose to fight. They didn't think they were signing up for WW2.
"The war will be over by Christmas" type sentiments are common historically. People imagining quick and easy victory in which the other side doesn't choose to fight back.
This is not true. It's a common historical myth, driven in part by some of the Japanese rhetoric at the time. Yes, the Japanese hawks did say things like "Americans are weak, and we will crush them with our bushido spirit!" But the reality is that most of the Japanese government and high command was well aware that they could not win a war against the U.S. and really wanted to avoid it. Yamamoto's Peal Harbor scheme was basically a hail mary; he was hoping they would do enough damage to cripple the US for months, during which Japan would secure its gains and by the time America was ready to gear up, we wouldn't have the will to actually go to war. And even he knew it probably wasn't going to work.
Countries do go to war underestimating their opponents and their will to fight, but it's rarely with completely delusional takes about how easy it will be.
China might convince itself that they can take Taiwan quickly enough to avoid an all-out war with the West, but I doubt they are dumb enough to think that the US won't react, or that there isn't a serious risk of a major war.
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They don’t expect to start WWIII. They expect to win the war quickly.
They don't even expect a war. They're playing positional chess, focusing on developing areas of influence. Each individual step will be a micro-escalation: too small for anyone to start a war over, and giving the PRC the space to deescalate if necessary without loss of face. Then, repeat.
At some point they'll need to start exchanging some major pieces, but if they position themselves appropriately beforehand, every exchange from then on will be to their benefit.
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