Of course not. There's glory, there's internal CCP politics, pooh bear's ego, claims over the South China Sea, reducing the US sphere of influence, the fulfilled narrative of a "united China", etc.

China doesn't stand to gain anything pragmatic by invading Taiwan. However humans, and dictators in particular, do not always act perfectly rationally and in the best interest of their nation.

Taiwan presents the same kind of military threat to China as Cuba presented to the US during the Cold War.

It's an excellent staging ground for bombing and the mountainous terrain to the west guards it from effective retaliation.

Even without a big chip factory, it presents an existential threat to the mainland only really matched by Korea or the Philippines.

An invasion would be incredibly costly, and would accomplish . . . what exactly? A final resolution to a civil war that barely anyone has a living memory of?

China wants TSMC. Rigging the whole thing to blow in the event of an invasion, and making it very public and very obvious that this is what will happen and cannot be stopped, is the best strategy to avoid that invasion.

It doesn't seem like the suggestion would be to destroy cultural landmarks, or even the majority of commercial ones, just the key components of the island's chipmaking industry that would incentivize an invasion by mainland China. It's an outcome that no one wants, but remains sufficiently feasible so as to be effective in preventing such an invasion in the first place. If the current CCP is bad, one that directly controls the majority of the world's chipmaking industry would be far worse.

I rather the island be preserved for generations to come.

im assuming they mean scorched earth economically, not in terms of like, fauna.

The primary benefit of capturing territory is using it to make money. And generate products and goods/services.

Also as a Taiwanese, fuck the scorched earth strategy.

I've seen people called Wumao for suggesting the collective suicide of the island was somehow less preferable than Hong Kong style reincorporation.

Folks are so terrified of Chinese rule that they'd rather kill themselves than endure it.

CCP has been claiming it for a while

"A while" as in about 400 years — that's when China took over Taiwan.

After World War II, there was a power struggle between the Republic of China (backed by the USA) and the Chinese Communist Party (backed by Russia).

The ROC/US controlled pretty much all of China, but then the US withdrew support and simultaneously granted concessions to Japan (as part of the peace deal between Japan and the US) and the CCP/Russia took advantage. The resulting civil war "ended" with the ROC having control of Taiwan, and the CCP controlling all of the rest of China.

But that civil war never really ended - it merely cooled down and became non-military conflict.

Its more about Taiwan’s geographic location

I have to agree. China's colonization drive in Africa is a long term deal - and that means that Taiwan blocks China's ability to exert control over the Indian Ocean (which will eventually become a necessity to enforce said colonization). China can play the waiting game now in Africa while the US and France wear each other out waging proxy wars neither of them can win in the long run... but eventually it will start exerting more direct control.