When Will China Invade Taiwan? An Online Media Analysis

A scrape against online sources asking the question, "When will China invade Taiwan?" was conducted with the intent on identifying what year was most commonly cited for an invasion to occur.

BACKGROUND

On Sunday, ALCON conducted a scrape inside a Publicly Available Information (PAI) aggregator, where a search was conducted against the specific term “When will China Invade Taiwan?” We wanted to see what year was most commonly cited in order to get an idea as to what news outlets and social media chatter were assessing.

SCRAPE

The scrape was conducted against online sources with the dates set between 01 JAN 22 and 02 DEC 22. The initial scrape did have a significant number of returns, however, many of these were irrelevant. After cleaning the data, there were roughly 60 returns that cited the exact search term and had genuine discussion or opinion on the topic.

SOURCES

The sources that were used in the counts were a mix of Main Stream Media, lesser known news outlets, forums and social media posts.

FINDINGS

To count years mentioned, the following criteria was used:

• ++ - This represented if a year was specifically mentioned as the year of invasion

• + - One plus symbol represented a year that was suggested, or a range between years was stated.

• +++ - Any plus signs with more than two symbols are the aggregated number of times a year was specifically mentioned in individual scraped tweets.

From the scrapes, the following was observed:

• 2024 - This was the year most online sources cited as the year China would invade Taiwan with 33 hits. Many sources believed this is because it is the year of the US elections, it is the year people believe China will have the military capability to successfully conduct the invasion and it is the year of the Taiwanese presidential elections.

• 2023 - This was the second highest and is the most dangerous. Sources suggested that many feel it would happen as the tension between the West and China will reach a critical points which will force China’s hand and move on Taiwan.

• 2025 - This was the third highest and is the wildcard. Online sources suggested this year based off comments from Taiwanese intelligence who assessed China could be ready to invade in 2025.

WHERE DO WE STAND?

Based on these findings, and these findings only, we lean towards the 2024 date being the most credible. This is because it is essentially a mix of all the indicators (military build up, political climates etc). Please note that these findings should not be considered robust analysis as it was an experiment for educational purposes only.

ENDS.