Perhaps the Falklands war? Argentina circa 1982 was stagnating but still about the 20th largest economy in the world. Taiwan is also sitting at about 20 right now.

Of course, a PRC/ROC war is likely to be much much more serious than the relatively minor conflict that was the Falklands war.

I'd think that Argentina of the junta wasn't quite as important economically as Taiwan is now, but I'd have to research to compare that. I would also imagine Taiwan's HDI is quite higher to Argentina's was back then. Another factor of note is that the junta was going through a shaky transitional period while Taiwan's democracy is fairly stable. Not to mention that while mostly diplomatically unrecognized, democratic Taiwan probably isn't a pariah in the same way a military autocracy like Argentina was.

Also, Argentina did not attack the UK proper nor did the UK attack Argentina. It was a very limited sort of war.

In this scenario, the better analogy would be US - UK, China - Argentina, Taiwan - Falklands, think again with that in mind.

Your argument makes sense when you look at the scenario from the perspective of what countries would do when their leadership acts rationally. That their leadership would act rationally is likely (though not assured) when dealing with democracies.

All bets are off when you're dealing with an autocratic junta. Even worse when dealing with a one man dictatorship with enormous concentration of power in the hands of that person.

That's likely why China before Xi (but post Mao) was less likely to attack Taiwan, and why China post Xi is an entirely different animal.

> That their leadership would act rationally is likely (though not assured) when dealing with democracies.

It would appear the past two decades have really worn at the optimistic sheen of democratic systems. Whether populist anger generating suboptimal decisions or cabals of self-appointed technocrats and bureaucrats using democracy's own procedural motions against itself, they haven't really revealed themselves to be much more rational.

> All bets are off when you're dealing with a dictatorship with enormous concentration of power in the hands of one person.

I'm not convinced that the Chinese Politburo is really comparable to states such as North Korea. For all of their authoritarianism, the government has gotten modern China into a prosperous state. An irrational state can't do that. Not to mention, if one was to argue that China's rise was because of other countries outsourcing production to them, well- those nations are often democracies.

> That's likely why China before Xi was less likely to attack Taiwan, and why China post Xi is an entirely different animal.

Xi is definitely more aggressive than his predecessors and is playing up jingoism. But it remains to be seen if it this isn't just a whole lot of saber-rattling and rhetorical brinksmanship. To prepare for war is one thing, to be ready to actually wage it is quite something else.