Not only military action. China can simply offer the engineers extremely generous offers and invite the talent to them. From what I read in a few places this is what they are doing.
I live in Taiwan and know many engineers who work in Science park (Foxconn, Tsmc, etc.) It is not at all uncommon for Taiwanese engineers looking to work in China because they pay more, but they really don’t want to do that if given a choice. Lots of people work in China for three or four months and return to Taiwan for a two week rest. Taiwan just doesn’t pay very well for engineers and takes advantage of them being citizens of this country.
These same engineers looking to go would rather relocate to Germany or the US than China. Either way there is a serious brain drain going on here where the brightest want to leave. Taiwan is a wonderful place but I question its stability over the next few decades.
It is quite sad how every developed country in the world is practically giving away their advantages to China. All because of short-sighted economics and political incompetence.
