I think we might be using "destroy" in different contexts. The ggp said

  >>>> the premise that China wants to take over not destroy Taiwan.

Which I interpreted as "they want the territory, they do not want to make the area unusable". Given the context of nuclear power and the implication that attacking that nuclear power plant would lead to a nuclear exclusion zone across a significant region of such a small island, I'm not interpreting "destroy" as "bombs were dropped" or "some buildings were destroyed". It's pretty clear they mean "they don't want to scorch the earth and salt it so no one can use it ever again."

So, that's what you were responding to. The destruction you're referring to is "more" complete. Not

  > famously not destructive towards infrastructure and people

This is certainly not the case and clearly not what is being referred to. You're right, that would be preposterous! But I'll suggest, if something sounds absolutely insane, chances are people are miscommunicating. Words hold multiple meanings after all...

I don't think it would be accurate to interpret them as saying there would be no blood spilt nor structure tumble. I think we all expect bombs to drop and bullets to fly in this conflict. So we should operate from this expectation.

But also, yes, there have been conquests that have been (almost) entirely peaceful. It's hard to be purely peaceful, but you could look at Russia's original invasion of Crimea. Only a few people were killed. But there are also examples of entire armies defecting or leaders deposed without killing them or destroying buildings. So even in the weaker usage of "destruction", yes, you can definitely conquer a territory without destroying a single building or a single life. Wikipedia even has a list of some of the more famous instances. You'll notice that in many cases control of territory changes[0].

Not to mention we have the entire class of conquests that are over uninhabited regions. But I think we'd agree that's out of scope of the conversation and not really relevant here. Just mentioning as we're talking about how easy it is to miscommunicate. Especially if we were to get into the complicated nature of determining what is a country or not. Taiwan being a perfect example, because clearly the PRC doesn't consider it a country while the ROC does.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bloodless_wars