>Can China afford a slow economic burn while it blockades Taiwan for ambiguous gains? Every year this becomes increasingly the wrong question to ask. Who is g

>Can China afford a slow economic burn while it blockades Taiwan for ambiguous gains? Every year this becomes increasingly the wrong question to ask. Who is going to blockade PRC? US? Entire Malacca dilemma / anxiety / blockade scenario from 10+ years ago was underpinned by US having full naval escalation dominance with CONUS impunity because adversaries had no technical means to meaningfully undermine US homefront. That leverage has essentially eroded with PRC ICBMs being able to conventional strike against CONUS infra in the last few years. PRC can simply run blockade and dare US to enforce by threatening to hit 130 refineries that sustains US existential viability. Fortress America era that has worked in US favour for 200+ years is over (vis a vis increasing PRC peer capabilities), if both PRC and US critical infra gets reset to zero, neither country has energy mix options or ag production (which depends on inputs derived from oil) that can even marginally sustain current society. The same ability to CONUS strikes also threatens major military capital projection assets. The geostrategic reality when big bois have increasingly precise conventional long range strikes is US becomes Saudi Arabia, all the domestic production doesn't matter if you can't protect it against motivated advesary that has capbility to strike your extraction infra. PRC will guarantee continued SLOC access by guaranteeing US won't have access to any energy or calories if it attempts to to deny like access to PRC. The pertinent question now is: Can US afford an existential war with PRC for ambiguous gains? Medium/long term PRC incentive is stacked towards gambling an existential fightng US (using TW as proxy) to kick US out of PRC back yard, vs US who can afford to retreat to CONUS and pull strings as offshore balancer with intact navy and society at much less relative cost. US, by virtue of being hegemon has much more to lose if she gambles to lose everything versus foregoing something. VS PRC has everything to gain in TW scenario while long term game theory for worst case scenario is converging towards pyrrhic victory for US that would deter substantial US intervention at all.