And there's already a precedent, China's annexation of Tibet. It was 70 or so years ago but the Chinese government has a long memory and long term goals.
More recently there was Russia's annexation of Crimea where the rest of the world did little more than say "We don't recognise your claim on Crimea". All we really saw in response was a UN resolution of recognition of Ukraine's claim to Crimea and even then, 58 countries decided to abstain from voting.
I think China sees those results as "encouraging", they don't give tacit approval but they certainly don't offer any resistance to one nation's claims on another nation.
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