Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "Why Does China Want to Annex Taiwan?" video.

Back then the ruling KMT also wanted to reunite China, just on their own terms. When it became obvious that it'd be impossible by force, they switched to challenge the Communists through better economics and attractiveness, which is a strategy seen today with things like TSMC, bubble tea, and Mandopop. Also a PLA invasion of Táiwān is still a land war where casual combatants with improvised weapons can defeat the political objectives of the occupier. Even if a fraction of Taiwanese joins their local resistance, it will still be devastating to the PLA which has very little combat experience or protective equipment. Táiwān could end up being the Vietnam+Iraq+Afghanistan to the PRC, especially since the Mainland carries multiple points of simmering separatism, and the loss of trade scared off by the crossfire and customer anger creates massive unrest from food skyrocketing in prices and collapsing in quality.
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As was said in the video, the mere existence of a "rogue" Táiwān directly challenges the narrative that the CPC is needed for the Chinese people to prosper. It was a threat to the Party when it was a KMT dictatorship, even more so now that ultimate power is decided by the people themselves.
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Plus the loss of extremely specialized human capital required to run the machinery at acceptable yields with Taiwanese engineers fleeing, dying in the conflict, or refusing to work. The reason the only real competitor to TSMC being Samsung is because of Korea's sheer concentration of brainpower within a few hours of where they need to be as fabs start deviating from their expected tolerances.
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As Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan showed, it is very possible in a land war for casual combatants with improvised weapons to defeat the political objectives of a much better equipped and trained occupier. Rumor is the US is training the ROC how to do exactly this, having been on the wrong side of an IED for decades now. The Party will be in for a fatal shock when their much-hyped PLA shows their utter lack of real combat experience and protective equipment against even a fraction of the Taiwanese who join their local resistance group.
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Concentrating the whole nation's chip-making brainpower is extremely important though. South Korea is the main competitor to Táiwān because they're able to get the right engineer to the right facility in a few hours before the fabs deviate too far from the desired tolerances and start costing money -- China has an issue with both its education and the different provinces competing for investments and employees, and getting the one right guy to the right place still takes too long even with all the HSR not to mention all the government travel checkpoints and authorizations. Extremely clean water is also required, which is getting harder to find in Mainland China with all the pollution from industry and urban development. If anything Japan and even Singapore would achieve the target yields faster than the PRC. In chip fabs it actually helps to be a smaller and more nimble player.
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Right, just because a country is fully occupied doesn't mean the war is over, as the US found out in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact rumor is the Americans are sharing their experiences with Táiwān on how exactly to defeat the political objectives of an occupier, having been on the wrong side of an IED for decades now. And a cross-Straits invasion could benefit the US with not only weapon sales but also the scramble for companies to restart manufacturing closer to home after losing access to China. Americans would complain about constant cyberhacks and rising prices of gadgets (then just adapt to a less digital dependent lifestyle), but the Chinese people would go into open revolt with the reduction of free trade leading to their food prices skyrocketing and quality collapsing -- as Lenin himself put it, "Every society is three meals away from chaos."
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