Again, I'm not saying there's no threat of a Taiwan invasion, and I do agree that in this equation, Xi's decision making is frighteningly the most uncertain factor into whether war happens or not (which The Economist points out as well).

What I found fear-mongering was your paragraph that culminated in "The whole world would plunge into decades of bloody conflict, turmoil, and chaos until maybe India emerges and shakes the world straight". I know the best we can do sometimes is take historical precedents and extrapolate them to current situations (e.g. your comments on WW2 and the Spanish Flu), but 2021 is not 1914 or 1939. War between Great Powers back then resulted in massive destruction and loss of life, but was not to the degree of being detrimental to the existence of humanity like it is now. If your "decades of bloodshed and turmoil" came true, any nation coming out of that would be "shaking" a world of ashes and bones.

Call me an optimist, but I wouldn't put a Chinese conquest of all Asia as the most likely scenario to happen in the next decade.