Dan Wang

I think that the flashpoints would be most likely something over Taiwan.

That's kind of the obvious one.

If the Chinese ever decide that their window is closing in actually reunifying the island, or in their words, liberating the island into socialism, either because

the U.S.

is going to be much more militarily strong, the Taiwanese are going to be much more militarily strong, there's some sort of crisis in China, then perhaps they decide to move.

Right now I see the status quo persisting because the status quo works well for the Chinese, the Taiwanese, and the Americans.

But if there's some big shift in strategic calculations, then that's always a sign of nervousness.

Maybe there's a flashpoint in the South China Sea in which the Philippines and China right now

have really been ramming each other's ships, and the Philippines has historically been a U.S.

protectorate, U.S.

ally, that could be a flashpoint.

In 2020, shortly after the pandemic broke out of Wuhan and the world was really nervous about this respiratory virus,

On top of this, the icing on the cake was that there was a minor border conflict between China and India way up in the Himalayans, which was fatal for a number of Chinese as well as Indian troops.

And China is surrounded by, I think, something like 25 countries.

It just has a lot of neighbors, some of whom, like North Korea and Russia, are not very nice and they don't fully trust themselves.

And so maybe there is some sort of a...

border conflict that erupts with one of China's near neighbors.

What I wouldn't think is likely is for the Americans to try to invade mainland China.

I don't see that the Chinese would try to seize Oregon.

What would they do with Oregon?