China’s navy is growing — one aircraft carrier at a time.
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How Would China Take Over Taiwan? One of These 5 Strategies
Xi’s military has options ranging from stepped up coercion to an outright invasion of the island.
While conflicts in Ukraine and Israel have dominated the world’s attention, this year has been relatively quiet in the Taiwan Strait. Next year may not be.
Taiwan is fast approaching its next presidential election, in January 2024. Once that vote is over, Beijing may try to discipline Taiwan’s new government by demonstrating how formidable Chinese power — military and otherwise — is. And as the chances of another crisis in the strait increase, so will the world’s attention to the prospect of conflict there.
The last such crisis, in August 2022, convinced many observers that Chinese leader Xi Jinping was set on bringing Taiwan to heel. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns reported that Xi had ordered his People’s Liberation Army to be ready for action by 2027. Provocative PLA exercises showed off many of the tools needed for an invasion or a blockade. All this set off a guessing game in Washington about when the climactic fight for Taiwan might come. But just as important as “when” and “whether” is “what”: If Xi does try to compel unification of the “renegade province,” what type of action might he take?
This isn’t a simple invade-or-don’t-invade binary. China has at least five possible strategies for squeezing and perhaps subjugating Taiwan. They range from what is already happening today — systematic, short-of-war coercion — to a full-on invasion, with options including blockade, bombardment and small seizures of Taiwanese territory in between.
There is a vigorous, if quiet, debate in US national security circles about which path Xi might take, and how Washington and Taipei might respond. Just as important, though, unpacking these possibilities illustrates the dilemmas each strategy poses for Beijing. The best chance for peace may lie in the fact that all of Xi’s options for taking Taiwan are shot through with risks and potentially fatal problems. The greatest risk of war, unfortunately, may come if the shortcomings of less-violent options push Xi toward the most brutal approach of all.
Xi’s preferred option is the one he’s pursuing right now: Coercion below the threshold of war. For years, the PLA has been ramping up aggressive activities — such as flying into Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone and barreling across the center line of the strait — designed to exhaust Taiwan’s military, reduce its physical space and create a sense that the island is unable to defend itself. Disinformation, cyberattacks and efforts to isolate Taiwan diplomatically round out this campaign.
In this sense, the fight for Taiwan is happening every day. Exert unyielding, intensifying pressure, the thinking goes, and Taiwan’s population will see the inevitability of unification with Beijing.
Coerced but peaceful unification is Xi’s preferred option because he knows what existential dangers war can bring. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is a warning that violent conquest can backfire catastrophically. In the South China Sea, by contrast, China has surged to supremacy by using coercive but mostly nonviolent tactics — such as building artificial islands that serve as military bases — to shift the status quo.
Xi would surely love to “win without fighting” in the Taiwan Strait, as well. The trouble is that this strategy isn’t working. Its effect on Taiwanese politics has been perverse: Over the past decade, Chinese pressure has undermined the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang party, or KMT, and empowered the more hawkish, independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party.
Support for unification among the Taiwanese populace is vanishingly small, especially since Xi’s ruthless crackdown in Hong Kong in 2019. At the same time, a distinctive sense of Taiwanese identify is growing stronger, not just among DPP voters but among the population as a whole. And if Xi hopes to peel international support away from Taiwan, his tactics are doing the reverse: The US is increasing arms sales, expanding high-level visits and otherwise doubling down in its relationship with Taipei.
If DPP candidate Lai Ching-te wins the 2024 elections — he currently leads in a fractured field — and delivers the party its third straight presidential term, Xi would have to ask whether coercion without war has failed. Even if the KMT or another contender triumphs, Xi may find that the center of gravity in Taiwanese politics has shifted, in ways that make peaceful unification most unlikely. Sooner or later, he might consider more escalatory options, like seizing one of Taiwan’s offshore islands.
Taiwan isn’t one island. It is a collection of islands, some of which are within swimming distance of the mainland. During the 1950s, Mao Zedong’s forces shelled two of those islands, Kinmen and Matsu, triggering crises with the US. Mao backed down, and the islands are still under Taipei’s control. But they — and their 140,000 residents — probably aren’t defensible if the PLA attacks, perhaps by using subterfuge such as a supposed humanitarian crisis to put its forces ashore.
At first glance, this strategy seems devilishly clever. It would force Taiwan to decide between committing, and probably losing, much of its military in a futile effort to save the offshore islands, and watching as a slice of its territory is swallowed by Beijing.
Dangerously Close to Mainland China
An invasion of the Matsu and Kinmen Islands by Beijing would create a perilous dilemma for Taiwan and the US
This geopolitical microaggression would also wrong-foot Washington: The US could either fight China over some strategically meaningless specks or see its willingness to protect Taiwan’s security called into question. Taking an offshore island or two would thus demonstrate China’s military dominance while creating hard choices and perhaps dissension for its enemies.
But how smart, really, is a strategy that requires Beijing to use force — thereby crossing a fateful threshold — without delivering decisive results? After all, taking an offshore island wouldn’t give Beijing control of Taiwan.
Such naked territorial aggression might, however, turbocharge Taiwan’s sluggish defense reforms, catalyze a more formal anti-China alliance in the region, and convince the US to issue clearer commitments to defend Taiwan’s remaining islands. It might even lead Washington to station US forces on Formosa, the main island, making a future Chinese invasion vastly more complicated.
An island seizure would humiliate Taiwan, but wouldn’t defeat it. It could turn out to be a small step that makes every subsequent step harder to take.
A third option would be the blockade. In this scenario, Xi would seize upon some pretext to cut Taiwan off from the outside world.
A blockade could consist of anything from a full-bore physical quarantine, enforced by warships and military aircraft, to aggressive “customs inspections” of ships trying to access Taiwan, combined with missile tests that scare off maritime traffic by splashing down outside Taiwan’s ports. It might be accompanied by cyberattacks on financial institutions and other economic infrastructure. A blockade could be tight or deliberately leaky; it could be short, if intended as a warning of unpleasant things to come, or long, if meant to destroy Taiwan’s economy, starve its population and force its surrender.
The blockade scenario is commanding attention in US national security circles, for good reason. Unlike an island seizure, the encirclement approach wouldn’t necessarily require China to fire the first shot, at least in theory. But it could make life extremely precarious for Taiwan, which depends on imported food, fuel and other essentials. The democratic world would probably respond with harsh sanctions on China, but Taipei might crack before Beijing does. A blockade would exploit Taiwan’s fundamental geographic vulnerability — its isolation — and perhaps compel its people to accept unification as the price of survival.
But the blockade isn’t some magic weapon. There’s no guarantee economic deprivation will make Taiwan capitulate: Historically, blockades have rarely caused enemies to surrender, unless combined with other ferocious pressures. Even in the best-case scenario, a blockade would take time to work, which would give Washington and its allies time to organize a response.
The US would probably probably flood the Western Pacific with attack submarines and otherwise position its forces exactly as it would want them arrayed if war broke out. The US military could then try to break the blockade by sailing and flying supplies into Taiwan — as hard as that would be across the vast distances of the Western Pacific — effectively daring Beijing to interfere. In other words, enforcing a blockade might still require China to fire the first shot, and thereby start a war its enemies have readied themselves to fight.
If a blockade isn’t sufficient, China might choose a fourth option — bombardment. Blasting Taiwan with bombs and ballistic missiles could help intensify the effects of a blockade by destroying road networks that connect Taiwan’s most accessible ports to its most important cities. It could wreck Taiwan’s navy and air force. At its most ambitious, a bombardment campaign would aim to coerce unification by breaking the will of the population — a modern-day version of Germany’s World War II blitz.
Bombardment makes sense if one thinks Taiwan’s fundamental weakness is lack of will to fight. In a place where mandatory military service is unpopular and defense spending is rising but inadequate, perhaps the population would knuckle under rather than endure persistent terror from above.
A bombardment campaign would feature some of China’s most formidable advantages, such as the world’s largest ground-based missile force, while avoiding the massive complexity of an amphibious invasion. So long as Beijing didn’t begin this campaign by also hitting US bases in the Western Pacific, it would force Washington to decide whether to intervene on behalf of a friend that might not hold out.
Still, uncertainties abound. Even if a bombing campaign destroys many targets, there’s no assurance that military punishment will yield the political objective Xi seeks: Convincing the government and populace of Taiwan to surrender to Beijing. Previous bombing campaigns have sometimes hardened the will to resist an aggressor: That’s what ultimately happened when the Luftwaffe bombed Britain.
And if any bombardment campaign doesn’t succeed quickly, its risks dramatically increase: The longer Beijing is pounding Taiwan and killing its people, the more international outrage it will generate, and the greater the chance of intervention by America and other states. If China seeks a truly decisive outcome, it may have to consider a more drastic, comprehensive assault.
The fifth and final option is the nightmare scenario. A full-scale invasion would likely begin with a massive airstrike against Taiwan’s armed forces and critical infrastructure, coupled with sabotage and attempts to assassinate its leadership. The PLA would then try to seize beaches, ports and airfields, using them to ferry in the troops and supplies necessary to conquer the island. Xi’s navy would seek to isolate Taiwan from foreign interference or support.
Along the way, China might hammer US forces with surprise missile attacks on American bases in Guam and Japan, and on aircraft carriers in the Western Pacific. Or perhaps it would use the threat of nuclear escalation to deter Washington from getting involved.
The attraction of this approach is its directness. There would be no waiting for a blockade to slowly squeeze the life out of Taiwan’s economy. China would exploit speed, brutality and proximity to resolve the Taiwan question before anyone could get in the way. It would then confront America and the world with a fait accompli that would be horribly bloody to reverse.
It’s a mistake to think that Xi would never try something so shocking. China has a long tradition of starting its wars with surprise attacks, as US forces discovered in Korea in 1950 and the Vietnamese learned in 1979. Chinese military doctrine places a premium on rapid, overwhelming assaults. And if China is motivated enough to use force against Taiwan, it might be motivated enough to use force as decisively as possible.
But still, the dangers would be enormous. Taiwan has mountains, jungles, cities and other terrain favorable to defense. It is protected by more than 100 miles of rough, hard-to-cross water.
An invasion would probably require air- or sea-lifting more than 100,000 troops onto hostile territory, while controlling the air and water around Taiwan — a military operation as impressive as any in history. It might well trigger intervention by the US, Japan and other countries; even if the invasion succeeded, it would devastate the very territory China seeks to control. And this approach, like any use of force, confronts Beijing with an awful dilemma.
China would have to make an epoch-defining choice on day one of any invasion attempt: whether to attack US forces in the region. If Beijing didn’t do so, its ships and troops would be sitting ducks for US airpower and sea power if Washington opted to get directly involved. But if China did attack US forces, killing hundreds or thousands of Americans, it has probably started a war with a vengeful superpower — one that risks destroying the mighty, ascendant China Xi means to create.
To be clear, there is no evidence Xi has decided to escalate the confrontation with Taiwan, even though he clearly wants the ability to do so. If Beijing tries to squeeze Taiwan tighter in 2024 or after, it might just redouble its coercion short of war, through military exercises, economic warfare and other means.
In practice, moreover, Xi’s five options would blend together. An invasion would be accompanied by bombardment and blockade. Likewise, one advantage of intensifying peacetime military activities near Taiwan is to make it harder for Washington and Taipei to determine when Beijing is actually preparing for war. Nonetheless, breaking out the different options is helpful in understanding the many varied ways China can give Taiwan a hard time — as well as why Beijing might think twice about any of them.
None of China’s options are ideal, or close to it. Coercion short of war may not work, if current results are any guide. Options like an island seizure or blockade require step-changes in Chinese aggression with no guarantee of strategic success. An attempt to conquer Taiwan brings risks ranging from military defeat — never a good look for a dictator — to World War III.
If Taiwan, the US and their friends can keep the price of aggression high, while also reassuring Beijing that inaction won’t simply result in Taiwanese independence — which no Chinese government can accept — perhaps Xi will decide that tolerating an awkward status quo isn’t as costly as changing it.
Or perhaps not. Xi may not be willing to live indefinitely with a status quo he probably considers unjust, even insulting, to a China that he feels is reclaiming its proper place atop Asia and the world. He doesn’t seem to understand how his own actions have undermined the status quo by promoting the anti-China turn in Taiwan’s politics and strengthening the US-led alliances Beijing purports to fear.
Xi’s country is rapidly developing the military strengths that might allow it to resolve the Taiwan question by force. “Whatever its actual intentions may be I could not say, but China is preparing for a war and specifically for a war with the United States,” Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall recently said. And if Xi elects to force the issue, the weaknesses of options like blockade or island-seizure could push him toward more severe, violent methods that offer — at least in theory — decisive results.
Such a decision could have baleful consequences for China and the world. But history is littered with wars that their instigators came to regret. The US and its friends need to be ready for all the courses Xi might pursue — especially the one whose effects would be most catastrophic.
Brands is also a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the co-author of “Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China” and a member of the State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He is a senior adviser to Macro Advisory Partners.