At his January 2025 confirmation hearing to become the U.S. secretary of state, Marco Rubio assessed that “unless something dramatic changes” in Asia’s military balance, China would attempt to invade Taiwan before the end of the decade. This view is widely shared. In May, for example, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party warned that “the clock is ticking to stop a war in the Indo-Pacific—and this Congress may be America’s last full chance to do it.”
The good news is that the short-term likelihood of a Chinese attack on Taiwan has diminished, even as it remains too high. The cause of this development, however, is not exactly reassuring. The events of the past year give Chinese leader Xi Jinping good reason to believe that his U.S. counterpart, President Donald Trump, will facilitate his attempt to extend China’s influence over the island without having to gamble on an invasion.
At his January 2025 confirmation hearing to become the U.S. secretary of state, Marco Rubio assessed that “unless something dramatic changes” in Asia’s military balance, China would attempt to invade Taiwan before the end of the decade. This view is widely shared. In May, for example, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party warned that “the clock is ticking to stop a war in the Indo-Pacific—and this Congress may be America’s last full chance to do it.”
The good news is that the short-term likelihood of a Chinese attack on Taiwan has diminished, even as it remains too high. The cause of this development, however, is not exactly reassuring. The events of the past year give Chinese leader Xi Jinping good reason to believe that his U.S. counterpart, President Donald Trump, will facilitate his attempt to extend China’s influence over the island without having to gamble on an invasion.
Any Chinese invasion attempt would be a risky endeavor. Even though China’s military modernization is accelerating, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is in turmoil. Meanwhile, the United States and Taiwan are fielding new capabilities and deepening their security cooperation, and Washington is moving to deploy missile and unmanned systems to the Philippines and nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. Against this backdrop, Beijing surely appreciates that any “victory” that it might win could be a Pyrrhic one—especially given the potential for nuclear escalation and the likelihood that a conflict would prove to be protracted.
By contrast, the political trends in both Washington and Taipei are presently in China’s favor. As a result, Xi is justified in thinking that he can make progress toward reunification without incurring the military, economic, and political uncertainties that would attend an invasion attempt.
Despite authorizing several high-profile, high-value arms sales to Taiwan during his first term and in the first year of his second term, Trump has, on the whole, evinced little concern for the island’s security.
He said in a January interview that Taiwan is “a source of pride for him [Xi]. He considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him, what he’s going to be doing.” Trump, for his part, appears to view the island principally through the lens of its chipmaking capacity. He declared in July 2024 that Taiwan had stolen the U.S. semiconductor industry and “doesn’t give us anything” (and repeated that charge after the Supreme Court’s tariff ruling on Friday).
In March 2025, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company announced that it would increase its investment in the United States by $100 billion. Trump subsequently remarked that while a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be “a catastrophic event,” he believed that the company’s investment would leave “a very big part” of the company’s business in the United States, where it would theoretically be safe in the event of a cross-strait war.
Xi also has a stick that has proved effective with Trump—and a carrot that could entice the president. On account of its rare-earths leverage, China can inflict significant pain across the U.S. economy, as it amply showcased during last year’s trade standoff with the United States. At the same time, Xi could continue playing up Trump’s perception of himself as the supposed peacemaker in chief, as he began to do when the two met in South Korea in October.
“Mr. President, you care a lot about world peace,” Xi said, “and you are very enthusiastic about settling various regional hot spot issues.” Xi could well convince Trump that the best way to be a global peacemaker would be empathizing with Xi’s vision of Asian security and supporting Taiwanese lawmakers who aim to facilitate negotiations between Taipei and Beijing on cross-strait issues.
One could also imagine that over time, in exchange for economic pledges from Xi, Trump might be willing to make security concessions that steadily afford China more breathing room to intensify its multifaceted pressure campaign against Taiwan. It is telling that the two leaders reportedly discussed future U.S. arms sales to the island. Regardless of what decision Trump ultimately makes, he has now signaled a willingness to negotiate a topic that U.S. officials had effectively taken off the table with the second of the “six assurances” that the Reagan administration gave to Taiwan in 1982.
Beijing also sees auspicious political dynamics in Taipei. Chinese officials have made no secret of their contempt for Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, whom they regard as more separatist-minded than his predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen. But he oversees a divided legislature; the informal opposition coalition of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party controls 60 of its 113 seats, while his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) only controls 51.
Another key player in shaping political dynamics within Taiwan—and between China and Taiwan—is Cheng Li-wun, a former DPP member who now leads the KMT, the main opposition party. She has said that she would like to meet with Xi early this year, potentially ahead of Trump’s scheduled meeting with the Chinese leader in April.
Cheng contends that Taiwan cannot depend on a United States that has elected Trump twice. Shortly before she was tapped to lead the KMT, she warned that Taiwan “must not become a sacrifice or Trump’s bargaining chip,” lest it “become another Ukraine.” She has gone further since taking the helm of the party, declaring that Taiwan will not “be involved in an internecine struggle” between the United States and China and even suggesting that a detente between Beijing and Taipei could “bring about cooperation between the U.S. and China.”
Cheng has also cited unreasonable demands that the Trump administration is placing on Taipei: Trump wants Taiwan to spend 10 percent of its gross domestic product on defense (for context, Lai hopes that that figure will reach 5 percent by 2030), and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wants Washington to have onshored 40 percent of Taipei’s semiconductor production by the end of Trump’s second term. While her DPP counterparts cast Cheng as misguided, even unpatriotic, her pronouncements align with multiple polls that confirm growing misgivings among the Taiwanese public about U.S. reliability. Cheng is far from a political juggernaut, but she has helped catalyze political sentiment that Beijing can only find encouraging.
Finally, notwithstanding domestic challenges and turmoil in the PLA, China’s overall power is growing, whether one considers its military capabilities, its technological strides, or its diplomatic footprint. Thus, it can continue to build a steadily more favorable correlation of forces across the Taiwan Strait while strengthening its pressure campaign, which aims to wear down Taipei psychologically. China is now competing more confidently than it was when Trump retook office, having withstood the administration’s tariff fusillade last year.
Moreover, Washington continues to alienate allies and partners in Europe—and sow doubt in Asia—with its “America first” foreign policy. It would be foolish for Beijing to get in Trump’s way while he is eroding the diplomatic network that has long been a pillar of the United States’ global influence.
No one in Washington should breathe a sigh of relief, though, for there remain ample grounds for concern. There are numerous provocations that China could undertake short of an invasion, including restricting maritime access to Taiwan. Some observers fear that the PLA’s emerging leaders, lacking actual combat experience, might be less capable of providing realistic military assessments to Xi—and might be even more willing to advocate an invasion attempt than the commanders who have been purged in recent months.
Finally, Asia’s waters and the skies above it are becoming ever more crowded, raising the risk of a clash between U.S. and Chinese military assets. The recent disruptions to the PLA’s chain of command have also, in turn, heightened the prospect of a ham-fisted response by Beijing that fuels rather than dampens escalatory dynamics.
As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hubris has demonstrated, leaders can make disastrous decisions if they sit atop sclerotic bureaucracies wherein top officials are reluctant to offer candid advice. U.S. officials should not project their conceptions of “rationality” onto their counterparts in other countries. China might decide that it has no choice but to attempt an invasion if it assesses that Taiwan would otherwise slip away.
The most likely triggers would be political, such as an indication by Taiwan that it is poised to declare independence or by the United States that it is set to make an explicit defensive commitment to the island. Alternatively, Xi might conclude that the next three years offer the most propitious window for China to achieve reunification since Trump’s successor may be much more proactively supportive of Taiwan.
For now, though, Xi has little reason to abandon the pressure campaign that he has been overseeing. Neil Thomas, a specialist in China’s elite politics, has observed that Xi is “a calculated risk-taker rather than a reckless gambler,” one who, during nearly a decade and a half at the helm of his country, has focused on “strengthening China’s position incrementally rather than chancing on a decisive clash.”
And Xi has seen the dividends of incrementalism elsewhere, whether one considers Hong Kong’s evolution into a financial appendage of China or China’s steady militarization of the South China Sea. At least for now, Xi seems willing to stick with incrementalism on Taiwan as well.
