"The key to victory is changing minds in Washington and in Taiwan." This is one of the most striking lines in Professor Andrew J. Nathan's imagined reconstruction of Xi Jinping's thinking on Taiwan. Nathan's essay is timely not because it predicts what Xi will do tomorrow, but because it captures a dangerous possibility: that Beijing may believe American hesitation, Taiwanese polarization, and China's long-term pressure will eventually cause resistance to collapse.

This possibility should not be dismissed. Recent developments have given Beijing reason to test it. Trump's remark that arms sales to Taiwan could serve as a bargaining chip with Beijing is troubling. It runs against the spirit of the Six Assurances that Ronald Reagan used to reassure Taiwan following the August 17 Communiqué in 1982. Simply placing Taiwan "on the table" already constitutes a political gain for Xi. It may reinforce his perception that Washington's commitment to Taiwan is negotiable, unstable, and vulnerable to transactional bargaining.

Nathan's imagined Xi therefore believes he has time on his side. He can practice coercive patience while the United States remains trapped in policy indecision over the defense of the First Island Chain, and while Taiwan is unsettled by fear and internal polarization. In this view, Beijing may not need to fire the first shot anytime soon. It only needs to make Washington doubtful and Taiwan uncertain.

Strategic Perception Is Not Strategic Truth

Yet strategic perception is not the same as strategic truth. Nathan seeks to read Xi's mind. I want to ask a complementary question: whether Xi is reading Taiwan's mind correctly.

Xi's perception of Taiwan as deeply divided by partisan conflict is not baseless. Taiwan's recent politics have been turbulent: the Great Recall Campaign and its setback, the Green-Blue divide, internal KMT fractures, and the rise of Cheng Li-wun（鄭麗文）as an outspokenly pro-China party chair. Beijing has also played the electoral game skillfully, cultivating local agents, amplifying pro-unification voices, and exploiting the island's divisions.

But Beijing's apparent success may contain its own contradiction. If the CCP helped empower a KMT leader who proudly speaks "as a Chinese," it may have strengthened one faction while weakening the party's broader appeal. Cheng's overtly pro-China stance risks alienating Light-Blue and independent voters. That is a serious problem for both the KMT and Beijing. If the KMT and its allies fail to win the 2028 presidential election, the DPP may continue holding the line on maintaining the status quo. Beijing may gain influence over certain actors while simultaneously damaging the very political vehicle through which it hopes to shape Taiwan's future.

This is where Xi's perception may miss something fundamental about democratic politics. Taiwan's democracy is noisy, polarized, and often frustrating. But democratic conflict is not democratic exhaustion. In 1996, Taiwan held its first direct presidential election under the shadow of Chinese missile drills. Later, serious electoral disputes and massive protests did not derail democratic consolidation. In 2014, the Sunflower Movement blocked the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement and disrupted the CCP-KMT cooperation platform. Without that movement, Taiwan and China might have moved much closer to a quasi-free-trade-zone arrangement just before the U.S.-China trade and technology war began in 2018.

Taiwanese voters can also punish political overreach. Many believed Chen Shui-bian（陳水扁）was corrupt, and so they voted the DPP out of office. Later, when voters believed Ma Ying-jeou had gone too far in his cross-strait policy, they supported student-led civil disobedience and subsequently removed the KMT from national power. Today, dissatisfaction with the DPP may reflect the fatigue of long incumbency or broader anti-establishment sentiment more than a sweeping rejection of Taiwan-centered China policy.

The Status Quo as Managed Suspension

Xi also equates the status quo with de facto independence. On this point, Nathan captures Beijin's logic accurately. For the CCP, the status quo is intolerable because Taiwan continues to govern itself, elect its leaders, regulate its economy, sustain its military, and cultivate its global presence. But Xi, like many CCP ideologues, may misunderstand what the status quo actually means to most Taiwanese.

For Taiwanese society, the status quo is not merely a diplomatic formula. Nor is it simply a legal ambiguity surrounding Taiwan's statehood. It is a lived experience sustained by democratic institutions, civil liberties, the "Taiwanization of the ROC," technological manufacturing capacity, and multicultural and cosmopolitan aspirations. It is precarious, but not hollow; ambiguous, but not passive.

The collective mentality surrounding the status quo is Janus-faced. On the surface, an overwhelming majority prefers some version of it. But expectations about the future tell a different story. In our survey analysis covering a ten-year period, only around 12 to 25 percent of respondents expected the status quo to persist in the long run. In 2025, 46 percent expected eventual independence, 33.8 percent expected eventual unification, and only 20.2 percent expected the status quo to endure. Many Taiwanese support the status quo not because they believe it is stable, but because it represents the safest shelter under dangerous conditions.

This matters. The status quo is not a settled equilibrium. It is a managed suspension.Taiwanese understand both sides of the coin. They know their autonomy is real in practice, yet constantly contested from outside. They also understand that the danger lies not merely in Taiwan's democratic autonomy itself, but in U.S.-China rivalry and Beijing's refusal to accept Taiwan's self-rule.

Xi may believe that this anxiety will soften Taiwan. But fear does not always produce surrender. It can also sharpen awareness of what is at stake. Coercion can become a form of political pedagogy. Hong Kong is the clearest example. Beijing may now present Hong Kong as orderly and prosperous after the crackdown. Many Taiwanese, however, see something else: the visible destruction of the promise that "one country, two systems" could preserve autonomy. Beijing's pressure has not simply shifted minds in its favor. It has also taught many Taiwanese what incorporation would actually mean.

From Globalist Irredentism to Coercion

The deeper problem, then, is not merely Xi's personal ambition. It is China's irredentism as a long-term imperial project. Trump and Xi are central figures in today's geopolitics, but their temporal horizons are not the same. Trump's power may prove temporary, even if MAGA endures longer. Xi's tenure appears more durable. Yet even Xi's long game is still smaller than the imperial calendar into which Taiwan has been inserted.

By imperial calendar, I mean a long-term, non-negotiable state commitment that becomes difficult for any leader to abandon. There may be no fixed deadline, and tactics may evolve, but the goal itself becomes nearly irreversible. The Qing campaign against the Zunghars unfolded over roughly a century across several reigns. The PRC waited decades for Hong Kong's return before ultimately imposing direct control. Taiwan now occupies a similar place in Beijing's imperial imagination: a territory marked for eventual recovery, with no easy off-ramp. This does not mean the PRC simply reproduces Qing institutions. Rather, inherited imperial imaginaries have been rearticulated through modern nationalism, party-state capitalism, and military power.

For decades, Beijing sought to embed its territorial ambitions within globalization. It used trade, investment, elite co-optation, symbolic politics, and economic interdependence to draw Taiwan into its orbit. This is what I call "globalist irredentism." During the Ma Ying-jeou（馬英九） years, this strategy reached its high point. Economic integration appeared to generate political leverage. Cross-strait exchange seemed to cultivate constituencies favorable to Beijing's agenda.

But that strategy has reached its limits. The Sunflower Movement, Hong Kong solidarity campaigns, Bluebird mobilization, and other waves of Resist-China activism demonstrate that Taiwanese society has developed the capacity to recognize and contest the China factor. At the same time, Taiwan's investment dependence on China has sharply declined, while U.S.-China competition has weakened the conditions for peaceful economic absorption. Globalist irredentism has not disappeared, but its promise has narrowed considerably. Coercion has now moved to the center.

Changing Minds Under Pressure

This is the paradox in Xi's long game. The more Beijing relies on intimidation, the more it exposes the limits of peaceful absorption. The more it attempts to change minds through threats, the more Taiwanese society may come to understand the status quo not as a waiting room for unification, but as a lived form of democratic sovereignty worth defending.

Nathan's imagined Xi is powerful because it reminds us that psychological warfare matters. Beijing does not merely count missiles, ships, and economic chokepoints. It also watches for signs of hesitation in Washington and self-doubt in Taiwan. In that sense, Nathan's warning deserves to be taken seriously.

But the outcome will not be determined by Xi's perception alone. He may mistake democratic disagreement for political exhaustion, fear for surrender, economic buyouts for political loyalty, and diplomatic isolation for social submission. Taiwan is vulnerable, and its defense preparations remain incomplete. But vulnerability is not the same as resignation.

If the key to victory lies in changing minds in Washington and Taiwan, then the crucial question is this: in which direction are those minds changing? Xi may believe time is on his side. Yet time has also produced Taiwanese democratization, civic resistance, technological centrality, and a distinct political identity. He may be reading Taiwan. But that reading may still be incomplete.