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Evil, Scary China Refuses To Passively Let Us Encircle It: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix – Caitlin Johnstone

That's a pretty good article explaining it. The funny thing is that the US media is always framing China as the aggressor. But one look at that map, like with your real eyes, not the crazy eyes, should show you the US is way out there on someone else's doorstep and who the aggressor is. That's just geography.

Personally I don't think China is going to invade Taiwan unless things escalate further. For example, the Russian perspective on the Ukraine is that the US supported the regime change through the NED, helped far right elements overthrow the democratically elected regime and then supported their stance to ban Russian language, oppress Russian speaking populations in Ukraine and supplied them with massive amounts of arms and intelligence. All of this is true historical fact. And in that situation even the chief of NATO Stoltenberg publicly said that Russia launched a "preemptive war" in response to this quasi-NATO membership right on their doorstep. If the US does the same with Taiwan, China might invade. That particular gabit is rather unlikely to succeed in Taiwan though, and Taiwan is far less dangerous to China than a hostile well supplied Ukraine is to Russia (only like 500 miles from Moskow). The smart play for China if that happens is to play rope-a-dope until the US gets tired. Kinda what Iran is doing about the numerous provocations and acts of war against them.

What does China achieve

The typical bully's satisfaction.

Taiwan is a fantastic launching point for an invasion of China and Taiwan has decent relations with the US and other capitalist states who have an interest in opposing China. Yk how people say Israel is an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the middle east? Taiwan could be like that for China if the western powers decided to use it as such. There is already a US military base there. Imagine how the US would react if Cuba had a Chinese military base? This is the main material reason.

Chip manufacturing could also play a role but it is a minor one compared to this.

Imo I think the biggest thing is it would be completing the revolution in the sense that the KMT fled to Taiwan and is a holdout, that would be a huge win for national pride and legitimacy for the government. The second biggest thing would be nothaving another country with an army so close to them that is "hostile" to their interests. And then after that there would be a lot of other benefits like absorbing their industry, economic zones, military bases, etc. They would much rather have the modern KMT party win an election and vote to become a part of China, than invade, which while very unlikely is not impossible by any means in the span of decades.

lemmitors: They hate Taiwan for their freedom!

Money, power, influence, prestige

The lithography machines could easily be reverse engineered.... Mechanically..... Only to find out just how complex the rest of the system is just to get it to even work making crap level chips much less anything respectable near the 3nm level. That would be hilarious. Like when the US left a bunch of helicopters and one of the revel factions got a hold of them...yey! We got the helicopters! Only to find out the helicopters aren't the thing that holds power. Barking up the wrong tree.

it's like Spain wanting Catalonia to be under control. Why would Spain want to lose control of a part of their own country?

The same Russia gained from invading Ukraine, I guess: securing themselves from future, final NATO aggression by proxy.

Street cred.