Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for China to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. And it looks like Xi might get his wish.

In March 2024, the then-head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. John Aquilino, warned that China would be ready to invade Taiwan in 2027. Aquilino told the U.S. House Armed Services Committee that “all indications point to” the People’s Liberation Army being prepared to carry out Xi’s orders. This isn’t a surprise. China has been engaged in the largest military buildup in modern history. And that buildup signals that China seeks to project power far beyond the Pacific.

Beijing has the largest fleet in the world and is currently the fastest-growing nuclear power on the planet. Its air force is on track to be the largest in the world. China’s growing military power belies its intentions.

The Pentagon’s annual China Military Power Report notes that Beijing has conducted more than 280 coercive air intercepts against the U.S. and its allies in the last two years alone. As China’s power grows, the Middle Kingdom has become more assertive. On its face, this isn’t unusual. Many scholars of international relations theory are quick to note that it is common for a nation’s military to expand commensurately with its growing interests. What is unusual, however, is the extent of China’s power. Napoleon predicted years ago that when China rose, the world would quake. Now, as noted American defense strategist Elbridge Colby observed, “the world is quaking.” Tremors are being felt from Taipei to Kyiv and beyond. 

The era of China “hiding its strength and biding its time,” as the late Chinese Communist Party head Deng Xiaoping famously recommended decades ago, is over. The U.S. has two years to prepare for World War III, former Rep. Mike Gallagher recently warned.

History tells us that China is engaged in a massive military buildup for a reason. Dictatorships buy weapons to use them or, at the very least, for their coercive power. It would be extremely odd for China, a nation with a long history of internal unrest, inequality, and poverty, to choose to invest so much in projecting power far from its shores — indeed, far from the region — without cause.

China has long coveted Taiwan. As Kevin Peraino documented in his 2017 book A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, the Chinese Communist regime began obsessing about Taiwan before they had even consolidated power in the final months of the civil war in 1949. Mere weeks after the fall of Shanghai, regime founder Mao Zedong ordered PLA commanders to “pay attention to the problem of seizing Taiwan immediately.” 

At the time, China hadn’t begun to recover from the invasion of the Japanese empire, let alone the decadeslong civil war. China had been in a state of perpetual upheaval for nearly four decades, dating back to the 1911 revolution, if not before. It speaks volumes that with millions dead, the countryside devastated, and famine commonplace, Mao set his sights on Taiwan before the blood had even dried. 

For its part, the U.S. also recognized the importance of Taiwan. As early as December 1949, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Omar Bradley called Taiwan strategically critical, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur famously called the island an “unsinkable aircraft carrier.” Yet, for many decades, China remained impoverished, the victim of Mao’s policies. Taiwan, now a democracy with a vibrant economy, was ruled by a military clique until the 1980s. Now, China has the means to make good on its plans. And it’s clear it is considering doing so. The consequences would be tremendous.

“We are in the foothills of a great power war,” Matt Pottinger, a former deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration, recently cautioned. Such warnings shouldn’t be taken lightly. A Sino-American war would be cataclysmic. China’s economic and military power dwarfs those of previous U.S. opponents, including the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan, among others. And America is unprepared. 

The U.S. has spent decades fighting insurgencies and non-state actors such as al Qaeda or third-rate armies such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. A war with China, a country with the means to deliver devastating strikes on the American homeland and to leverage supply chain vulnerabilities to shut down hospitals and key sectors of the economy, would be of a scale and type not seen since World War II, if ever. The logistics alone of such a conflict would put tremendous pressure on U.S. defense planners. Indeed, during the last World War, the U.S. spent more than three years in brutal warfare in the Indo-Pacific fighting Japan, a country whose economic and military might pale in comparison to present-day China. And that war’s denouement only came thanks to the U.S. being the sole possessor of nuclear weapons — an advantage that the U.S. no longer enjoys. Indeed, some analysts fear that China may be eclipsing the U.S. in the latest revolutionary development in military affairs: artificial intelligence.

The stakes are even higher now. The Indo-Pacific will soon account for the majority of the world’s GDP. If China successfully seizes Taiwan, it will be on its way to mastery of that region and, with it, the world. By displacing America and becoming the sole superpower, Xi will fulfill a long-standing objective. As Mao proclaimed in 1956, “To overtake the United States is not only possible but absolutely necessary and obligatory.”

Beijing also seems to have a plan. Or, at the very least, it seems intent on exploiting American weaknesses.

China has boosted its support for various regimes throughout the world. On the European landmass, Beijing has played a key role in fueling Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In the Middle East, China has become an important ally of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And closer to home, China has continued its close ties with North Korea. All of these countries are ruled by brutal autocracies, and all have shown themselves to be capable of sowing chaos. China’s decision to deepen relations with all three is likely not a coincidence.

China, Pottinger warned in May 2024, seems to be “setting the table” for war.

Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine will go down as a seminal moment in modern history, a sign of how far American deterrence has eroded in Europe and beyond. Moscow seeks to remake the map of Europe and reconstitute its old empire. And it believed that it could do so unimpeded. Ultimately, Putin’s goal of seizing Ukraine was thwarted by the bravery of Ukrainian fighting men and women and aid from the West. That conflict seems to have settled into a war of attrition, with Ukraine unable to expel Russian forces fully from its land and Russia unable to conquer Ukraine. This is certainly not the outcome that Putin, who audaciously dreamed of being able to seize Ukraine in a matter of weeks, envisioned. But a war of attrition suits Beijing just fine. It serves to distract American policymakers and the public from China’s growing might while simultaneously depleting munitions stockpiles that would prove essential to thwarting a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Indeed, in November 2024, the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Samuel Paparo, acknowledged that some of the munitions being sent to Ukraine were “eating into stocks … and to say otherwise would be dishonest.” Such weapons are crucial, he added, noting that “it imposes costs on the readiness of America to respond in the Indo-Pacific region, which is the most stressing theater for the quantity and quality of munitions, because [China] is the most capable potential adversary in the world.” Jake Sullivan, the Biden administration’s national security adviser, recently concurred, admitting that “the American ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ was fundamentally underequipped for the task at hand.” Restoring the defense industrial base, Sullivan said, will prove to be a “generational project.”

Previously, some analysts had maintained that munitions sent to Ukraine were of a different type than those that Taiwan would need, that aid to one wasn’t necessarily linked to the other. But this clearly isn’t the case. And it may go far in explaining China’s support for Russia.

In March 2023, Putin and Xi held a meeting in Moscow and hailed a “new era” in their relationship. By September 2024, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell called Chinese aid “very substantial,” noting that Beijing’s assistance is helping Moscow circumvent sanctions and that “these are not dual-use capabilities.” Rather, they are “basically being applied directly to the Russian war machine.” Campbell and others believe that in exchange for this crucial support, Russia is providing China with the latest in military tech, to include submarine, missile, and stealth technology. Traditionally, Russia has a history of both temporary alliances and enmity with China, and on some occasions, Moscow has been reluctant to share its military tech with its neighbor to the east. Russia’s need for assistance is obvious, but it’s likely that China’s desire to help is predicated on more than a desire for mere technology. In fact, by most metrics, China’s military is both qualitatively and quantitatively superior to that of Putin’s Russia. That China benefits in other respects, namely by keeping the U.S. and its allies distracted and depleting munitions, is a fact that American policymakers must consider.

It is in the Middle East, however, where Beijing’s shift is most glaring. For decades, China had a very specific Middle East policy: be “friends to all” and avoid taking sides in the strife-prone region. Beijing merely sought to secure its energy needs and avoid making enemies. To a great extent, China’s involvement in the region has largely been focused on shoring up its trade and commercial ventures. But this is changing — and fast.

China has deepened and expanded ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the top state sponsor of terrorism. In recent years, Beijing and Tehran signed a series of agreements, with China promising to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in exchange for heavily discounted oil. China’s energy needs are vast. Beijing has inked deals with Saudi Arabia, too. But in Iran, China gains something more: a regional foil capable of tying down and distracting Washington. 

China benefits from Tehran’s terrorist network, which controls Lebanon, portions of Gaza and the West Bank, and maintains decisive influence in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, providing them with the ability to threaten and attack U.S. forces in the region as well as traditional American allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia.

And with the U.S. bogged down in the Middle East, America is less able to deter and confront a rising China. Indeed, Tehran has used the Houthis, its Yemen-based proxy, to threaten key shipping lanes — lines of commerce that are essential in the global competition between the U.S. and China. This has the advantage of weakening U.S. power both in fact and in perception, further eroding American deterrence.

Tehran is also a kindred spirit. Like Beijing and Moscow, the Islamic Republic is both a revisionist and imperialist power, seeking to expand its holdings. Both China and Iran want a diminished American presence in the region. And both regimes have a shared interest in overturning the U.S.-led international order. Indeed, according to a 2021 study by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Beijing “views Tehran’s opposition to the United States as augmenting China’s increasing global influence.”

The latest Israel-Iran war offers evidence of Beijing’s decision to choose a side in the decadeslong conflict between the Islamic Republic and the Jewish state it has sworn to destroy. According to Israel’s Channel 12 news, Israeli forces have found “vast quantities of weapons manufactured by China being used in Gaza.” The number of weapons involved indicates that they have been brought to Gaza in an organized supply process, the report noted. The weapons include rifles, grenade launchers, ammunition, radios, and advanced communications platforms. An Israeli intelligence source told the Telegraph, a newspaper based in the United Kingdom, “This is top-grade weaponry and communications technology, stuff that Hamas didn’t have before, with very sophisticated explosives which have never been found before and especially on such a large scale.”

The CCP has also used state media to push anti-Israel propaganda. The State Department’s deputy envoy for combating antisemitism, Aaron Keyak, noted: “What we saw after Oct. 7 was a drastic change in the social media within China. The antisemitism became more unplugged, more free-flowing.” There was, he observed, a “conscious decision by the Chinese government to allow that kind of rhetoric to be greatly increased.” China has broken with a long-standing tradition in its foreign policy. And it is revealing that the Middle Kingdom has chosen to side with America’s enemies and against Washington’s allies. Such breaks with policy don’t happen without an underlying objective.

China also benefits from its support for the Kim regime in North Korea. Pyongyang is the ultimate wild card: a nuclear power with a history of volatility and an ambition to unify the Korean Peninsula under its rule. For decades, North Korea has been a growing threat to the U.S. and its allies in the region. The country doesn’t lack conventional strength. By some estimates, its special forces are larger than the entire U.S. Marine Corps. Chinese aid and assistance have been essential to keeping the Kim regime in power. One can easily imagine a scenario in which North Korea is used to tie down and distract the U.S. while China eyes Taiwan.

The U.S. can’t get inside the head of Xi Jinping. It can’t know for certain when or if he plans to invade Taiwan or what his strategy might be. But there is no denying that recent events serve to stretch and distract further an America with a depleted defense industrial base. Xi does seem to be “setting the table” for war, and China seems to be inviting Russia, Iran, and North Korea to the table for the feast. Taiwan may be the first course, but it certainly won’t be the last. As Winston Churchill warned more than eight decades ago: “Danger gathers upon our path.”

The U.S. must act with urgency to deter Beijing. Policymakers should encourage allies to step up their defense spending and to work together to counter shared threats. More burden-sharing is essential. America must rebuild its defense industrial base, which has become a shadow of its former self. 

An invasion of Taiwan would herald a more dangerous age. The hour is late, but there is still time. The choices made now are likely to echo for ages. As the late historian Paul Johnson observed, “There are no inevitabilities in history.”

Sean Durns is a Washington, D.C.-based foreign affairs analyst. His views are his own.