I don't think that would be much different than the UK invading say Gibraltar in 1704. I'm not going to advocate for it but if they did it, and held their posse

I don't think that would be much different than the UK invading say Gibraltar in 1704. I'm not going to advocate for it but if they did it, and held their possession for a few hundred years (content with what the capture did for their political posture) then yes, we'd be having a different conversation. Possession is 9/10ths of geopolitics. A few hundred years from now, the population of Taiwan would likely have a very different opinion of the matter. At that point I suspect there'd be quite a lot of resistance to breaking them away from the mainland too.