China will not annex Japan or South Korea. As a Chinese person, I can assure you that this is not how our mindset works at all. Most of the Western media hype about this is deliberately designed to muddy the waters around the Taiwan issue. Taiwan is different: the vast majority of people there are ethnically Chinese, so reunification is seen as an absolute necessity. But historically, China has never been good at ruling non-Han peoples. Every non-Chinese group has always been viewed as a net burden. Take Myanmar as an example: even if China occupied it and gained a warm-water port, the price would be having to assimilate tens of millions of Burmese people. That cost is simply too high; no one in China wants to pay it. The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.” So with South Korea and Japan, the real goal is to surpass them industrially and economically, to leave them in the dust on the factory floor and in the lab. When it comes to Japan in particular, the deepest desire in many Chinese hearts is for Japan to start a war first—so China can finally settle the historical score once and for all. But even in that scenario, turning Japan into “part of China” is not on the table. No one wants 125 million thoroughly non-Sinicized Japanese inside the country; that would be seen as an endless headache, not a prize.