About a month ago, one of our top geopolitical and military advisers – and far and away the most accurate forecaster on all matters China – called to say he had amended his views on the probability of the Middle Kingdom having a crack at that recalcitrant province, aka Taiwan. He was bringing forward his expected time horizon to the next 12 months.

I was surprised because our panel of about seven global advisers had generally coalesced around the opinion that China needed another five to seven years to militarily prepare for unilateral unification with Taiwan. Internally, we disputed the panel’s judgment. We countered that President Xi Jinping had a strong incentive to attempt unification in the short term for three reasons.