Comment by audunw
But they don’t have energy independence or food security yet, which is kind of a hard requirement for an invasion.
There’s not enough rail lines and gas pipelines from Russia to feed them with significant quantities of fossil fuels.
Imagine how bad Russias invasion of Ukraine would’ve been without energy independence and food security. The invasion of Taiwan is an order of magnitude more difficult, and Taiwan now has the recipe for how to knock out the entire naval fleet of a more powerful nation (see how Ukraine has essentially incapacitated Russia in the Black Sea).
I would expect an invasion to prompt the US navy to put up a blockade, disrupting China's oil supplies and generally making it very hard to keep their economy going. Admittedly, Trump is a wild card; he's random enough that it is hard to be sure what would happen.
I do not think China could survive a blockade.