A great overview of the history of Taiwan, both as a possession of China, and of historic periods Taiwan belonged to Japan and other powers. And of the balance of power between China's current military, despite its growth, as compared to arsenals of the U.S. and other world powers. That China's vulnerabilities both miliary and economic, deter China from wanting to invade Taiwan. It's interesting that Taiwan from 1895-1945 belonged to Imperial Japan, and that when returned in 1945 briefly, then belonged to the Chinese republic of Chiang Kai Shek, and has never belonged to Communist China. So a militarily stronger Taiwan would be emboldened to more clearly state that they will never join China, and to state that Communist China has no more claim on them.
And China's enormous dependency for imports of food, oil, natural gas and nitrogen (for farming), that China relies on foreign nations for such a high percentage of these, that China could very quickly be brought to its knees if deprived of these imports, in a matter of weeks, if punishing sanctions and shipping blockades were imposed on them over a Taiwan invasion.
I've known for a long time about China's desire to get the Amur river region back from Russia (an area twice the size of California, including Vladivostok), and that it is the lower hanging fruit, easier to leverage from a militarily over-burdened and sanction-crippled Russia, than Taiwan would be, to fight a costly war for.
But despite that Taiwan appears to be less feasible to conquer than first appears, the absolute control of Xi Xinping over China's elite, the lack of Chinese elite leaders to be able to dissent from Xi, and the lack of communication between the various branches of the Chinese government, make an irrational impulse to invade Taiwan a possibility.
