Chinese leaders believe in Marxist Leninism. They believe that the world will inevitably become Marxist and their Leninist party can speed up this great end. They believe that China deserves to be the world’s greatest power, that it once was, and that it will be again, and the Chinese Communist Party will lead China to this greatness while at the same time leading the world to its Marxist future.
A great strategic advantage that the US has traditionally had over China is that the US had many allies and partners. Recently, the US has been undermining this great strategic advantage.
W Bush focusing on fighting insurgencies while China was rising, led to the US not having the military industrial base and stockpiles of certain munitions. If the US uses too many munitions fighting Iran, it will be greatly weakened for a fight against China. This also weakens US deterrence against China.
However, if Iran is in too much chaos to pump oil, or if it is friendly enough with the US that in the event of a China-US war it would not sell oil to China, that would be a huge advantage in starving China of oil in the event of a war.
China is planning to be prepared to militarily take Taiwan, by blockade or invasion, by 2027. This plan includes the ability to hit American bases in the region, knockout American infrastructure with cyber, and to quickly invade Taiwan if invasion is the choice. China regularly operates in Taiwanese waters to lull Taiwan and others into not suspecting the real attack.
Taiwan has a higher GDP per capita than South Korea and Japan. Taiwan’s median wealth per adult is about the same as the US. The US has higher average wealth because of a handful of super rich people.
Taiwan is buying HIMARS to have mobile long range artillery to strike an invading Chinese beachhead, ships, and Chinese naval facilities across the strait in China.
The US is stretched between Iran and Taiwan, partly because of navy resources used to quarantine Venezuela.