Why would China nuke Taiwan?

out of spite. they'd get glassed anyway, so why not use those nukes for something?

Because that's literally the land the hypothetical war would have been started to capture? Because the casus belli to their public has been that it's (PRC) Chinese land by historical and cultural right? Because the entire domestic and international point of provoking a Strait war would be to demonstrate China's strength?

It's a pretty bad look if your "winning" looks like "killed millions of people and rendered the land in question uninhabitable for a decade+." (To say nothing of the potential non-Taiwan collateral damage)

And retalliation would be immediate and dooming.

Mutually assured destruction

Better Dead Than Red is alive and well, hahahaha.

We can shoot down some of those nukes. Maybe china has to fire 20 on taiwan before one of them gets through our anti-ICBM weapons on our naval ships.

Means that we might come out of a war with china with only a few cities lost. Might actually be worth it.