Kabul now…Taipei next! Kiji Noh in San Francisco: Taiwan, as I pointed out, has 16 weeks of mandatory military service. The bulk of fighting would fall to US hands. Taiwanese troops would not/could not put up much of a fight. And US troops on Taiwan would be a declaration of war against China. That cannot be contained.

Kabul now…Taipei next! Kiji Noh in San Francisco: Taiwan, as I pointed out, has 16 weeks of mandatory military service. The bulk of fighting would fall to US hands. Taiwanese troops would not/could not put up much of a fight. And US troops on Taiwan would be a declaration of war against China. That cannot be contained. 現在喀布爾……接下來是台北！ 舊金山的 Kiji Noh：正如我所指出的，台灣有16週的義務兵役。 大部分戰鬥將落入美國手中。 台灣軍隊不會/不能進行太多戰鬥。 而美軍在台灣將是對中國宣戰。 那是無法遏制的.

It is ineffective, as I pointed out, but it is still conscription, despite how the government spins it.

Taiwan originally had planned to end conscription in 2012, and switch completely to an all-volunteer force.
This did not pan out as not enough Taiwanese youth were willing to join the military. This plan has been periodically reinitiated from time to time, each time to failure.

https://taiwantoday.tw/news.php?unit=2&post=2137

As a stop gap measure, the government has issued a shortened conscription period of 16 weeks/4 months. People who refuse military service still have to do 6 months of alternative service.

The Taiwanese are facing irreconcilable contradictions regarding conscription: a demographic shift resulting in a diminishing number of eligible youth 18-29, an even greater number of youth who are reluctant to voluntarily join the military, increasing manpower costs (to incentivize joining and retention), refusal of volunteers to join units that could be involved in combat, and a reluctance of politicians to touch the third rail of reinstituting longer conscription.

Even worse (for the Taiwanese):

“…recent public opinion surveys suggest that many in Taiwan do not yet take the risk of a war with China seriously. In early August, a poll commissioned by the Chinese Association for Public Opinion Research found that only 20 percent of the Taiwanese public believed a military confrontation over Taiwan’s status might happen. It also revealed that less than half of those polled would be willing to fight if such a war did happen.

The poll also asked respondents whether they thought the United States would send troops to defend the island from attack and how they thought Taiwan should react to a war between China and the United States. Nearly 60 percent said they had faith that the United States would intervene in a cross-strait conflict. Yet a mere 20 percent indicated that Taiwan should return the favor by fighting alongside the United States in a war against China. In contrast, two-thirds indicated that Taiwan was better off remaining on the sidelines.”

The Painful, but Necessary, Next Steps in the U.S.-Taiwanese Relationship

A war would not be without bloodshed–wars are always about bloodshed, but it would be a losing battle.

The key fact is that Taiwan does not field a military worth its name. Its divisions are at 60-80% strength, i.e. barely operational.
It does not have the manpower to operate the expensive toys that it buys from the US. Since 2017, it has had a 16 week conscription, in which 5 weeks is boot camp, and 2 weeks discounted for school “training”. Conscripts are thus with their units for 9 weeks, which is essentially babysitting/summer camp, certainly not long enough to incorporate them into unit combat operations and tactics. The reserves are equally bad.

This means that the bulk of fighting would fall to US hands. Taiwanese troops would not/could not put up much of a fight. And US troops on Taiwan would be a declaration of war against China. That cannot be contained.

As for separatist beliefs, the Taiwanese and Chinese speak the same language, eat similar food, and resemble each other.
In HK, a colonized mindset (and a rightwing, comprador teacher’s union) led HK youth to aspire to be white-adjacent colonial sycophants and terrorists with bad cockney accents. I think it’s a harder sell for the Taiwanese colonizers to identify with the subjugated colonized indigenous.