China's Economic, Social, and Military Calculus for Annexing Taiwan by 2030
The claim
China will keep pressing the First Island Chain short of war, on a timeline set by Xi's age more than by military readiness.
The assessment is written in estimative language throughout (very likely, almost certain, likely), and it commits to a window: unification pursued by 2030, but no earlier than 2026. The reasoning behind that floor is the interesting part. It reads the timeline off leadership rather than capability, arguing that the driver is Xi's legacy campaign and the span he can personally expect, which is a claim about motive that a purely order-of-battle assessment would miss.