But China has to ask itself, given that 1) we can't possibly win the island, and 2) this is going to be very expensive, can *we* afford a war with the US?

After all, since Taiwan could be defended with just submarines that the US isn't using anyway, there is a near 100% chance that the US would defend it. What could China do in response? I guess they could fire (hopefully conventional) ballistic missiles at us, but soon we'll have a reasonable effect defense system against that.

I just can't bring myself to the place where I believe China is this stupid.