Xiamen. The first clash appears to have been averted for the time being: China’s People’s Liberation Army ended its military exercises in Taiwan on Wednesday. However, this does not mean a sustained clarification – quite the contrary: “The situation” will continue to be monitored and “regular patrols for combat readiness” will be carried out, according to a statement. The possibility of a Chinese invasion is always hanging over the heads of the 23 million islanders like the sword of Damocles.
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Last week, a handful of US military experts from the renowned Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) showed how the emergency could play out. A few steps from the White House, they simulated a hypothetical Chinese war of aggression in 2026.
The computer’s highly complex calculations produced a result that was both hopeful and shocking from a US point of view: in most likely scenarios, the Taiwanese could defend their island together with Washington’s help, even if an all-sided victory was in the offing. associated with disastrous disasters. losses – and also for the US military, which would lose about half of its entire navy and air force in a four-week conflict.
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Of course, there is a cynical flavor when Washington think tanks conceptualize war games as chessboards. After all, you don’t even want to imagine the immense consequences of a military conflict between the two main world powers. But given the rising tensions around Taiwan over several decades, it actually makes sense to keep an eye out for all eventualities.
China and the USA: doomed to war?
The current conflict between Washington and Beijing resembles a pattern described by the Greek Thucydides more than 2,000 years ago. Thus, the rise of a new great power regularly leads to war with the old one. What does history teach? Is disaster inevitable?
Finally, over the past week, Chinese troops have practiced a blockade of the island a few kilometers off the coast of Taiwan, launching several missiles into its waters. And the troop maneuvers are being accompanied by increasingly offensive claims to power by the Beijing government. It just published a new white paper on the “Taiwan issue” on Wednesday, which conveys an unmistakable message in more than 9,000 words: “We will use all our strength and sincerity to work for peaceful reunification. But we will not give up the use of force and reserve the option of taking all necessary measures.” A few pages later, he still says: “We have never been so close to our goal of national unification” – and never before “so confident”, this one too to be able to achieve.
Taiwan begins military maneuvers – Chinese invasion simulation
The maneuver was planned and not a reaction to Chinese military maneuvers in recent days, he said. China also continued maneuvering on the Taiwan front.
© Source: Portal
It is difficult to determine whether this is propaganda or a realistic assessment. But the informational value of war simulations, such as those carried out by CSIS last week, is limited in any case. Because many variables are still open – above all, whether the US would support Taiwan militarily in an emergency. Also, due to the lack of transparency in the Chinese army, it is difficult to predict which weapons it might develop in the coming years.
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invasion would harm China
Last but not least, an invasion of Taiwan is far from the most likely scenario. On the one hand, China does not want to point its guns directly at those people it describes in the propaganda as fellow Chinese. There is also the risk that a war of aggression could destroy Taiwan’s critical infrastructure – particularly the semiconductor factories of undisputed market leader TSMC, which manufactures nearly 60% of all microchips worldwide. Half of these go to companies based in China.
A blockade of the island, as the People’s Liberation Army has already tested in recent days, is therefore considered more likely. The aim is to isolate Taiwan economically by blocking access for Chinese ships to the island’s main ports. Currently, around 240 ships pass through the Taiwan Strait every day.
China’s military recently showed how quickly it could enforce such an embargo. At the same time, however, the military maneuvers also exposed “China’s own economic vulnerability,” as David Uren of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute argues. Because China’s biggest ports in Shanghai, Tianjin and Dalian are also massively dependent on the strait crossing. As Bloomberg recently analyzed, tankers carrying around a million barrels of oil pass through the Taiwan Strait, which is just 130 kilometers wide, every day. Sailing through this northern Philippines is only a limited alternative, as the so-called Luzon route is highly susceptible to cyclones.
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In addition to the economic consequences, Michael E. O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institutions of Washington recently examined whether such a militarily implemented blockade would really bring Taiwan to its knees. His study arrives at an unsatisfactory result because it is open-ended: there are a similar number of credible scenarios that predict a Chinese and Taiwanese victory. Finally, the security expert draws the only meaningful conclusion: “It is more than clear that both sides must avoid this type of war now and in the future.”
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