Xi Jinping's own words. He continues to say publicly that China and Taiwan will be reunified, most recently at his meeting with Biden in SF and then again in his new years speech a few days ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38828960
He has been saying that for a decade without equivocation or ambiguity. If we take him at his word, then the optimal time for Xi to do it is in the 2020s, 1) while the US Navy is at its weakest since the Cold War, 2) China has the demographics and economic strength for a war, 3) while Xi Jinping is young and fit enough to handle a war, and 4) the US president is either aging Biden, chaotic Trump, or incompetent Kamala.
Xi has instructed the PLA/N/AF to be fully modernized and mission capable by its 100yr anniversary in 2027, and they are on the largest fastest military buildup since Germany in the 1930s. They're also acting belligerent and aggressive toward Taiwan, other neighbors in the South China Sea, and vs India on their border. We've seen this behavior and mentality in dictatorships before and know where it leads.
> Hardly relevant for the 20s.
The announcement is diplomatically relevant now, even if not militarily relevant till the 2030s. It's part of a package of reassuring US allies in the region that the US is committed to defense of its democratic friends and allies there. Without such clear reassurance, some may conclude they have no choice but to pre-emptively concede and capitulate to the CCP on Taiwan, SCS militarization, CCP stealing SCS resources in other countries' exclusive economic zones, etc. This is part of a comprehensive diplomatic/economic/military strategy of preventing that.
Xi himself, as recently as just last week, centering reunification in his New Year's speech [0]
Delaying China is absolutely critical for democracies to remain globally viable. The fundamental principle is that any person or country who wants to remain self-determining must be better armed, prepared, and able to fight than the local bully or global authoritarian; if not, they'll take your lunch and democracy every time. With Russia, supported by China [1], we are already far past a new Cold War and into a Hot War with the autocracies.
The better defense capabilities of the democracies rely on the concept of "Defense Offset", which is basically maintaining a technological advantage so that a numerically much smaller military can prevail against a numerically superior military (e.g., US mil 2019 total size 1.388MM [2], vs China 2.535MM [3]).
This military advantage, since at least the late 1960s, has relied on advantage in microchip technology.
When the first Cold War ended after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Grand Experiment was tried. The idea was that free flow of economic benefits and information would inevitably lead to open and democratic societies. Sadly the generous experiment failed miserably — all it did was further empower the dictators. Now, Russia is attempting to regain all it's territory back to 1917, and China is continuing it's expansionist ways. This is because they now have significantly closed the technology gap to the point where even Iran is contributing significantly to Russia's war on Europe with the Shaheed drones, using a lot of off-the-shelf technology, and Ukraine is significantly bolstering it's defense with FPV drones.
So, even if China does eventually manage to catch up (which is unlikely considering how many insanely complex and globally-non-China-sourced technologies go into one $450MM ASML chip lithography machine), the key is to delay CCP sufficiently that we can extricate them from the democracies' supply chains and maintain a sufficient military offset to defend democracy around the world.
We are starting very late, so this is truly critical, unless we are OK with us and our descendants living under a regime like CCP or Putin.
Do you have a source on that?
> AUKUS
The one that is supposed to result in submarines getting delivered sometime in the 2030s at the earliest? Hardly relevant for the 20s.