A lot of silly nonsense here in the comments, but this is a very serious question. The OP headline “The Chinese communist dictatorship wants war” … is utterly false.
Taiwan is not internationally recognized as an independent country, unlike Ukraine. It has no seat in the UN, and the U.S. has accepted for decades the formulation that there is only “One China” that both the Mainland and Taiwan are a part of. Most U.S. leaders (and both party’s Presidents) have actively discouraged all talk of “independence” for Taiwan ever since the U.S. established diplomatic relations with China — until recently.
Increasing U.S. military aid to Taiwan enrages most mainland Chinese nationalists, as does our using sanction threats to force Taiwanese chip manufacturers not to sell high-end chips to China, far and away their largest trading partner.
Of course China has backslided terribly on political reform under XiJinping’s one-man top-down control of the Communist Party, and Taiwanese today more and more see the Mainland as a threat to their democratic freedoms.
On the other hand, few Taiwanese want to see their island bombed or blockaded by China (something the Mainland could accomplish relatively easily). War would be devastating to Taiwan. The KMT just won the Taipei municipal elections. Meanwhile the Biden Administration is racing to move high tech Taiwanese chip companies to the U.S.A. and other safe locations, and encouraging a Ukrainian-like martial spirit in Taiwan.
The Chinese leadership is not wrong to have built islands and bases in the South China Sea … from its own point of view. It knows the U.S. could strangle its oil and other crucial imports in a major confrontation. Controlling this area allows China to prevent oil shipments from the Middle East reaching U.S. allies like South Korea and Japan — should the U.S. ever try to blockade oil shipments from the Persian Gulf to China. This would make the U.S. hesitate to take such a radical step.
Will China “invade” Taiwan? Certainly not soon, and certainly not after seeing the U.S. bring its powerful allies together against Russia in Ukraine. China’s leadership wants a peaceful unification or a return to the previous status quo wherein Taiwan traded equally with China and the West. China, as I have said repeatedly, has ways to apply pressure on Taiwan other than invading, but none have worked well to this point, and “kinetic” pressure like blockading the island or striking ports and airports unless Taiwan agrees to certain terms … is very risky.
A full rupture and end to trade between the West and China is in nobody’s interests, least of all Taiwan’s. But unfortunately, that is where we may be heading, especially if political divisions allow warmongers and demagogues in Congress to get their way.
