New Bloom (Taipei) — Western experts and military officials continue to issue dates for a prospective China invasion of Taiwan. The latest such example is a prediction by US Air Force General Mike Minihan that a war will occur between the United States and China over Taiwan in 2025. This was written in a memo which was obtained by the news media.

On the other hand, 2027 has been another year often proposed for when China would have the military capacity to invade Taiwan. Consequently, the most well-known of the claims that China would invade Taiwan before 2027 came from Admiral Philip Davidson, the former head of the US Indo-Pacific Command. Davidson first made this claim a couple years ago and has continued to double down on it. This has given rise to much commentary specifying a specific “window” for when China would most likely conduct an invasion.

Coincidentally, Davidson is visiting Taiwan this week, including a meeting with President Tsai Ing-wen.

The year 2027 is seen as pivotal in part because this is when Xi Jinping’s next term as China’s president ends. It is speculated that this occasion may incentivize Xi to take action. Namely, the notion is that Xi may hope to settle the “Taiwan question” before his third term, feeling a sense of urgency to notch this accomplishment.

Of course, having the military capacity to invade Taiwan is an entirely different matter from being willing to conduct a costly invasion.

China would have to mobilize hundreds of thousands of troops for an invasion and could lose tens of thousands to death and injury. Sacrificing such a significant number of young lives could deal a direct blow to the domestic political legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.

An invasion of Taiwan would also lead to global economic cataclysm, including for China with its electronics supply chains tightly linked with Taiwan.

Likewise, the impact on the Taiwanese economy alone, based on size, would send the world into a crisis, not to mention the effect on an already slowing Chinese economy. Consequently, the Chinese Communist Party would have to weather the severe economic impacts and deal with the attendant consequences for domestic public sentiment. Many analysts have long pointed to a link between China’s economic performance and the degree of public tolerance for Chinese Communist Party rule.

Yet, one has seen Western experts claim that there is a 100% chance that Xi Jinping will attempt to invade Taiwan before 2027. Several months ago, some experts even claimed that the United States needed to prepare for the possibility that Xi might invade Taiwan before the end of last year–despite the basic fact that logistical preparation for such an invasion would itself likely require at least several months, making nonsense of the timeline they were proposing.

It is increasingly common for experts to toss out probabilities as to the odds of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan that seem only tenuously connected to any factual data.

Certainly we live in the age of “hot takes,” and as a result sometimes commentators may simply be seeking to outdo one other with their extreme statements.

Likewise, as the aftermath of then-US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan went to show, there is a significant perception gap inside Taiwan and outside of it.

Even as the international media feverishly discussed the possibility of conflict erupting over Taiwan as an imminent prospect, the Taiwanese public did not have any such perception. For the most part, life went on as usual, in spite of the fact that the Chinese military exercises held in the aftermath of the Pelosi visit took place closer to Taiwan than during the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1995-1996.

Part of the explanation for this relative lack of alarm may be that Taiwanese have already experienced decades of coping with Chinese threats.

In this sense, Minihan’s prediction of a war in 2025 fits into an established pattern among Western experts; Minihan issued his statement noting himself that it was simply based on his own “gut feeling.”

As with other experts who have made such claims, he may have deliberately sought to be alarmist in order to encourage further steps toward military readiness.

On the contrary, there could very well set in a sort of “boy who cried wolf” effect. After a series of alarmist predictions about when China will invade Taiwan–and with each of these timelines passing with no such event occurring–the public may gradually lose concern, seeing in the latest round of dire warnings little more than yet another baseless and incendiary claim from the US military.

This article was originally published in New Bloom. Edits for style.

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