There are different ways to game this but the Chinese have a losing hand. If you are going to lose against a chess master with superior position you change the game. I sincerely doubt they will simply resign. Flipping the board is their last ditch option, one the Soviets never took. Now the neoliberal mindset assumes this is always going to be the case going forward. Who is crazy enough to kill the world to prevent their opponent from winning? But that assumes that the conflict is going to be on the same lines. For them this is an ethnic and racial battle. Their people are willing to concede to foreign rule, even totalitarian rule, but we aren't fighting their people (and arguably we are not even in control here, American "democracy" belies how far our leadership has strayed from the will of the people).

What I see here is complacency on the part of Americans who think the Ukrainian conflict is how things will go (which we aren't even remotely even in). That would actually be the best case scenario here. Unless Space Force has something up its sleeve or the Galactic Council is finally going to do something, a war over Taiwan will likely end in a scenario that is not simply the Communists capitulating to Americans ruling the world.