A moderately useful overview of Chinese attitudes towards Taiwan in the context of the fluctuating self-definition of the Chinese nation and consistent (and often legitimate) anxiety about Taiwan being used as a bridgehead to restrain the Chinese nation. The level of analysis drops abruptly regarding the 1940s, as Wachman unconvincingly speculates about Taiwan's sudden emergence as a salient issue in the Chinese mind.
I do suspect, contrary to Wachman's attempt to convince his readers of the utility of 'geostrategic' motivations viz. zero-sum Pacific dominance and the outer geographical limits of China's conceptual boundaries, that Taiwan remains so important due to a confluence of factors, each of which would have to be utterly subverted to produce any shift in the PRC position.