Individually, European countries (including, but not limited to France) are too small to act against China. This is why the EU is so important: EU can (still) stand up to China, in ways France simply cannot. It would of course be even stronger if UK was still part of it... But in any case the EU cannot sell weapons.

I read quite a few French defense forum where netizens are wondering how France could sell weapons to Taiwan, without being singled out. One idea is to sell expertise, parts and maybe even blueprints rather than weapons. "Made in Taiwan" enough not to brush China the wrong way. As long as it looks local enough, China might agree to look the other way. This is of course a rather pessimistic line of thought, as the idea here is that China simply doesn't care of a handful of frigates, destroyers and fighters in the hand of the Taiwanese army. They simply don't want a slap in the face from a foreign country.

To put things in perspective, by 2030 the Chinese vessel fleet is expected to be at least 425 ships strong, versus a target of 355 for the US. [1] With production capabilities vastly superior to that of the Western world. In that regard selling 5 destroyers to Taiwan is probably not a big deal. But maybe it's not all that useful.

[1] https://www.meta-defense.fr/en/2020/09/17/the-355-ships-targ...

That’s an interesting method I didn’t think of, however I understand why the officials would be wary of it: in a way its similar to selling the source code instead of the finished product. The French military complex while less powerful than the US one probably don’t want to share how the sausages are made.

No amount of weapons could stop China invading Taiwan if they chose to.

This is not true. If the US stepped in to defend Taiwan, militarily, the US nuclear arsenal would be enough.

If you’re not aware, China also has nukes. And they can also hit every square inch of the United States.

There is something call MAD, that keeps the United States scared of launching nukes against China.

Nuclear weapons will never, ever be used by any nation for any noire to confrontation in protection of a 3rd party.

Carrier strike groups, on the other hand, are used and will be used.

All China would need to do is ban exports of Chinese goods to the US in retaliation and the US would be completely crippled and unable to function as a country within 3 months. There is literally no scenario where the US would ever nuke China.

Are Chinese imports to the US really that critical?

And how would China fare without all those US dollars?

If that was so important, then why don’t Trump just give them nukes? Why don’t Taiwan just declare independence? Let’s get this world war 3 started already.

Taiwan is already a sovereign and independent state, it does not need to "declare independence" from anyone. Nukes are very powerful and strategic, it’s easy to understand why nobody wants to sell to anybody else.

Because giving nukes to someone is dangerous (more dangerous than giving stingers to the taliban) and subject to approval that Trump won't get. Taiwan is afraid to declare independence, they even have a mainland chinese governor to help the PRC keep up the pretense.