Ukraine is on a plain between two mountain ranges. It has been tossed from one empire to another since the Scythians - it traded hands four times in the 20th century alone. When Russia talks about "buffer states" or "the near abroad" they're referencing the fact that there's no geographic boundary between Russia and anything else through there and if you want to roll across it, there's nothing but fences to trammel.

- In the 1500s the Dutch failed to take Taiwan fully

- In 1622 the Chinese failed to take Taiwan fully (although the presence of the Dutch drove the population from 1500 to 60,000 Chinese)

- In 1626 the Spanish failed to take Taiwan fully

- In 1668 the Chinese finally convinced the Dutch to give up

- In 1895 the Chinese ceded it to Japan without any local war at all

- In 1945 the Potsdam agreement gave it back to China (the Americans had been bombing its airfields occasionally)

The Taiwan Strait is more open water than there is between Detroit and Buffalo, NY. It is every bit as far from Taiwan to Xiamen as it is from Madagascar to Mozambique. The Falkland Islands are only 125 miles further to the mainland than Taiwan is; Key West is twice as close to Havana as Taiwan is to Fujian. The last time the Chinese retook Taiwan it was through blockade; logistics have changed a bit in the past 350 years and fundamentally, dislodging an island enemy is hard enough when you control the ocean around it.

China's losing streak - against anyone but the Chinese, or nations they swore they weren't going to invade, dates back to 1839. I've come around to the rationale that they might try? But your start and end points are twice as far apart as they were for D-Day.

Hard to say. I've read from the diviners that the reason they let Xi have a third term was that he promised Taiwan within the 5 years of his term. But I think the thing that will keep it safe is the thing that has kept it safe for the past 75 years, which is the Taiwan straight. Hong Kong never stood a chance, but in the end, Honk Kong is attached to mainland China, belonged legally to mainland China, had to defenses to speak of, and isn't that much of a strategic interest of the US. Taiwan has the opposite situation in all of those aspects. And it has a population who may mount a formidable resistance.

If you're Taiwan and you were thinking about a peaceable soft reunification with China, the way they railroaded Hong Kong has you rethinking that pretty hard. There are probably a lot of people who have been swayed in recent years to never trust the CCP and won't ben willing participants in their takeover. Quelling an insurgency from across a small ocean is no small feat, even with a formidable facial recognition apparatus.