Taiwan though is different. China is not a strong naval power, its strength traditionally relying on its overwhelmingly immense land army. Amphibious invasions are among the most difficult operations in warfare, and Taiwan's geography limits potential invasions to only a few easily defendable points. China is building up its naval capabilities, but getting to the point that seizing Taiwan is even feasible will still take years - years that they don't have. This is to say nothing of the inevitable coalition that would join Taiwan in resisting such an invasion. Without experience in such invasions, China would be likely to suffer tremendous losses for trivial gains, at least at first. This would make the CCP appear incompetent and further reduce their military capabilities at exactly the same time that they would be most at risk of internal strife, which no doubt foreign powers would be throwing their full weight behind.
No, it makes more sense that China's current posturing is saber rattling meant to stir nationalist sentiment in its own population. It's the same reason for its recent clashing with India and its remarkable recent diplomatic hostility. The last thing it wants or needs is new territory full of independence minded dissidents, but creating external enemies is a classic and often effective play for regimes on rocky ground.
While it's always possible that some hawkish firebrand comes to power or there is some major miscommunication that leads to hostility, the CCP and Xi especially have a long track record of pursuing stability above all else, which has honestly been the Chinese goto play for thousands of years. An invasion of Taiwan would be in direct opposition to that goal, and could only end very badly for the CCP and Xi. Perhaps if China survives its demographic crisis it will emerge as a premiere power that can seriously consider such military expeditions, but it'll be dealing with that problem for a generation.
By contrast, Taiwan is dreadful, at 1.07. Eventually, China will be able to just sail in.
The real threat to our chip supplies is that the world will run out of intelligent Taiwanese people to operate TSMC.
Your population in their 20s are your soldiers, your baby makers, your first home buyers, your 80 hour a week workers, your pop culture consumers - a sharp drop in their numbers is catastrophic for a nation's geopolitical and economic health. Combined with China's baby boom about to enter their 60s, when their economic productivity will substantially decline and their medical costs will skyrocket, to be supported primarily by weak cohorts 20 years younger it is a terrible position to be in. On top of this, the People's Republic of China is currently 72 years old, for context Russia went 74 years from the abdication of the Tsar to the fall of the Soviet Union, and the average lifetime of China's 49 dynasties has been 70 years. 65 to 75 years is approximately how long the revolution remains in living memory, how long people are still alive who personally remember how bad the previous regime was and thus continue to excuse any faults of the current regime. Once it passes out of living memory, calls for reform become far more intense. This triple whammy is imminent and inescapable.
For China to survive, it will have to deal with a shortage of manpower, a dramatic increase in the cost of social services, severe economic contraction, and the reforging of a national identity all at the same time, with a reduced sized military, a large number of young unmarried males with poor prospects, all while under severe external pressure along all fronts. This will be a rough decade for China.
For example if China will successfully take over Taiwan, it can use that experience as a leverage in it's colonization of African and Asian countries that it's already actively attempts. China was a provider of important bricks in the world economy growth in the past decades, if CCP manages to put themselves on top of someone elses economic growth the same way, they can manage to afford the very expensive management of demographic collapse and economy transformation.
Taiwan is not a source of manpower and economic growth, the only thing of value is a high tech industry that will be immediately destroyed by any sort of military action. Whatever minor gains could be hasd would be completely overshadowed by the immense cost of fighting the pro-taiwan coalition. China's economy is reliant on ocean going foreign trade, both for the import of raw materials and the export of its manufactured goods, but that trade is totally at the mercy of powers that aren't big fans of China to begin with and would openly oppose it in the case of war. You can't maintain the world's second largest economy running freighters through a blockade in the hopes of selling a fraction of your wares in third world ports.
Saber rattling is often an effective strategy for galvanizing public support, but actually fighting a war typically proves disastrous. Even in the absolute best case scenario where the US and other western countries don't join the conflict, one need only too look at the Soviet Union in Afghanistan or the US in Vietnam to see how a superpower can be humiliated by a grossly inferior opponent and the severe internal strife caused by such boondoggles. Again, amphibious assaults are difficult under the best of circumstances, and Taiwan is an especially difficult target; China's huge advantage in population is useless as you're limited by the number of troops you can land on a beach, and China has zero experience in conducting such operations. The odds of such a war becoming a long and protracted conflict that destroys the Chinese economy and causing mass unrest is incredibly high. The idea that Taiwan is an easy practice target on the road to some second scramble for Africa is simply laughable.