If you want to leave Taiwan in the case China invades, the right time is when China makes actual preperations for an invasion. For China to execute an invasion

If you want to leave Taiwan in the case China invades, the right time is when China makes actual preperations for an invasion. For China to execute an invasion, or even just a blockade, requires a lot of preperations that will be easily visible on satellite images. It'd be easier to see coming that Russias invasion of Ukraine, and if you remember the US told us with near certainty that Russia was going to invade just before they did. Most people with insight into Taiwan-China relations consider a blockade the likely first move. Perhaps even the only viable one. Considering the number of US citizens living/working in Taiwan, they'd probably escalate slowly in a way that would signal foreigners that they should leave the island. If no US citizens is hurt in the first strike, there's a chance US won't bother getting involved. But if China, without any warning, just lobs some missiles at major cities, and US citizens gets killed, what do you think the result would be? Seriously, we've been through this before the last time DPP was in power. The moment KMT was elected the aggressions stopped. If you look deeper at their signs of aggression, it becomes clear they're mostly for show. To keep DPP and its voter just scared enough to not make major moves towards formal independence. You know when you should actually get worried? When China starts to pick small winnable fights aimed towards training their military in real conflicts. They have zero practical experience. The PLAs last real fight was their skirmish with Vietnam that they lost with great humiliation. They need to escalate gradually to weed out issues caused by corruption and complacency. And Russia has now shown that even that might not be enough when it comes to the final big conflict. The problem for China here is that they have no viable small neighbors to pick at. Maybe Kinmen and Matsu islands, or some of Taiwans tiny remote islands with military bases. But that's very risky because it'd likely make people think they've triggered a full conflict with Taiwan which would trigger a rapid arms build-up in Taiwan along with possible crippling sanctions against China. Ideally they'd pick a fight somewhere else to make people think they're not yet focused on Taiwan. Like Russia with Georgia and Syria. China's viable strategy for taking Taiwan is just a giant contradiction: they need to go straight for Taiwans main island in a surprise attack in a way that minimizes the chance of US involment to have a remotely decent chance of success. But that excludes the possibility of gaining real practical experience they desperately need for that very same invasion, and it maximizes the risk of collateral damage to innocent US citizens.