1. The thinking up to fall 2025
Intelligence available to Western sinologists prior to fall 2025 had established a consensus that China President Xi Jinping's long-cherished ambition was to "reunify" Taiwan with the mainland and thus vault his historical role to an equal level with Mao Tsetung. His timeline was to accomplish this by 2027, either by negotiations (very unlikely) or by military force. Chinese military violations of Taiwanese territorial water and airspace have become routine, and were clearly exercises in preparatioin for a military invasion.
2. October 2025: The Purge of Generals
Nine high-ranking generals of China's Central Military Commission (CMC) were relieved of their duties in October of 2025, including CMC vice chair He Weidong, CMC Political Work Department director Miao Hua, and former defense ministers Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe. This phenomenon persisted, and reached a dramatic peak in January 2026 with the firing of Generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli. Zhang was the military's most senior officer, vice chair of the CMC. Liu was the military's top operational commander as chief of staff of the CMC Joint Staff Department.
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) editorials during the October 2025 purges mentioned "job-related crimes involving exceptionally large sums of money." The explanation for the January 2026 firings charged that Zhang and Liu had "seriously fostered political and corruption problems that undermined the Party's absolute leadership over the military."
Western understanding of the dynamics within the CCP is historically poor and chancy. So dramatic has the purge of high-ranking generals been, however, that guesses are proferred as to what might be going on. Since the purges have resulted in either open positions or positions now occupied by dramatically less-experienced personnel, it is suggested that the phenomenon may well have compromised the miltary's equipment, personnel, and training. This further indicated added risks for Xi Jinping in ordering the military into combat during the current decade.
Does all this indicate that Xi's desire to invade Taiwan by 2027 has been abandoned or drastically pushed into the nexty decade? "Possibly" is as much as we can say. Other recent developments, below, might shed light on what the purges may signify.
3. November 2025: Japan Pledges to Interfere
In November of 2025 Sanae Takaichi, Japan's new prime minister, declared that were China to attack Taiwan, Japan would activate its self-defense military forces to aid the island. This out-of-the-blue announcement evidently gobsmacked the Chinese. They promptly denounced the very idea, cancelled rare earth exports to Japan, curbed Chinese tourism to Japan, and, most pointedly, demanded that the Giant Pandas loaned to Japan be immediate returned.
Japan is not a major military power in the East, but the announcement certainly added a new problem that had to be addressed were an invasion to take place, a new challenge to the long-established scenario.
4. Astonishing Reception by Xi Jinping of Taiwan's new KMT Chief
Citizens of China awoke on April 10 to an unprecedented sight. Splashed over every television outlet, Party or not, was the astonishing sight of Xi Jinping shaking hands with the chair of Taiwan's Kuomintang party on a "peace visit" to the mainland.
First of all, China has a director of cross-strait contacts, whose job it is to meet the few visitors from Taiwan. This one was being met—and shaking hands with--the very President of China, General Secretary of the CCP, and Chairman of the Central Military Comission, Xi himself! Chi-gwai—very strange, as the Chinese say.
The visitor was Cheng Li-wun, a highly-educated lawyer (Masters in law from Pennsylvania's Temple University, Masters in international relations from Cambridge University), and former member of Taiwan's pro-independence Democratic People's Party (DPP). In 2002 she quit the DPP and joined Taiwan's Kuomintang party (KMT), which currently favors peaceful relations with China.
The televised photo was most intriguing, not least because of Cheng's bold appearance: a confident 56-year-old with long auburn hair cascading over her shoulders, equally as tall (and striking) as the five-foot-eleven Chairman grasping her hand in his.
Cheng claims that Taiwan's DPP creates more risk for Taiwan than her approach. Her meeting with Xi Jinping shows "the sincerity and determination of the Chinese Communist Party to engage in peaceful dialogue and exchanges across the Taiwan Strait." That claim may not have been true in the past, but—well, there's the photo, amazing though it may be. Another factor…
5. Donald Trump
Ah. Perhaps the most important "new factor" in the equation of U.S. war with China over Taiwan—or not.
Xi Jinping doesn't need to have an excellent national intelligence service to realize what he needs to know about President Trump: his impulsiveness, his readiness to use America's massive military might, his utter unpredictability, his transactional approach even to long-time U.S. allies, his Secretary of State known as a "hawk" with respect to China.
Xi is currently scheduled to host Presidient Trump in Beijing in May (wartime duties in Iran permitting). Much will depend on that meeting, whenever it occurs, with respect to the prospects of a U.S.-China war over Taiwan. The preceding factors discussed above will all come into play, delicately and astutely balanced by Xi. Will Trump be willing to concede Taiwan to China for readier access to China's rare earths? Is Xi in fact still planniing to forcefully invade Taiwan? Or do the preceding factors suggest that he is amending his long-held goal by pushing it back a decade or two? Or abandoning it altogether? Is he wondering whether a war—perhaps a nuclear war—over Taiwan's status is really worth the risk?
6. So what do all these "new factors in the equation" indicate?
We must keep in mind the West's long history of gauging China's intentions—a history of poor guesses. This has always been a chancy business. Each of my readers will make what they will of these new factors.
I end by taking you to China's deep northwest, at the very edge of the Gobi desert. Jiuquan, one of China's three most important space centers. Jiuquan was where Yang Lingwei, China's first astronaut, was sent into space in 2003 and became a national hero. It is still launching Chinese astronauts. Approaching the town, one must notice a giant billboard, where a message is proclaimed in huge scarlet characters, in both Chinese and English, interestingly. "Without Haste. Without fear. We conquer the World."
China has patience. It is confident. Fearless. The world will belong to it. No matter what.
Or so it claims.