How a Chinese naval blockade could isolate Taiwan and send shockwaves across the world

Joshua Keating

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When most people imagine war in the Taiwan Strait, they tend to conjure up images inspired by Normandy, France, in 1944; Incheon, South Korea, in 1950; Baghdad in 2003; or even Kyiv in 2022: Troops streaming out of transport ships onto beaches, missiles slamming into air defense systems, and heavy casualties all around. In short, a bloody conflict with the potential to draw in the United States and its allies.

But what if a Taiwan D-Day never comes? What if instead of all-out invasion, Beijing instead opts for an escalating pressure campaign aimed at bringing Taiwan to its knees without actually starting a war?

“What I fear is that China will not do a frontal assault on Taiwan, but they will begin to do one thing after another that never quite gives the United States or Japan or the Quad Alliance any casus belli,” or justification for war, Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, told Grid last August.

In this scenario, Beijing’s campaign to snuff out Taiwan’s political autonomy would involve not hundreds of thousands of troops crossing the Taiwan Strait, but a more subtle approach: ships interdicted at sea and undersea cables snipped in mysterious circumstances. Many experts believe these tactics are more likely than all-out war.

“A full military attack is uncertain,” Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, told Grid. “To fight a war, you need at least some level of confidence that you’ll win, and the Chinese don’t have that at this point.” Sun said China’s concerns about a war in Taiwan have likely increased since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — an operation many seasoned military analysts assumed would be a weeklong cakewalk but which shows no signs of ending after nearly a year of war.

Tactics meant to isolate and strangle Taiwan’s economy are generally described as a “blockade,” but that’s a term that can encompass many different actions. Ian Easton, a defense analyst who studies Chinese military planning documents and doctrine, suggested that China could pursue a “protracted blockade that varies in intensity. The point would be to try to coerce the Taiwanese government to come to the negotiating table on conditions set by Beijing.”

More concerning, Easton told Grid he believes this campaign is “already starting at a very low level, and it’s gradually becoming more intensive over time.”

All-out blockade

The world got a preview of what a blockade of Taiwan might look like last August, in the days following then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) controversial visit to the island. As part of Beijing’s response, the Chinese military conducted live-fire exercises in six areas surrounding the island, effectively blocking international shipping lanes and forcing cargo ships to redirect traffic in the area.

For many, the operation was a wake-up call. In an emailed statement to Grid, Taiwan’s deputy foreign minister, Tsai Ming-yen, wrote, “Last year, the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war in February and China’s live-fire military drills around Taiwan in August alerted democracies around the world to the dangers of totalitarian expansionism. There is general recognition that solidarity is necessary to counter this trend.”

A naval blockade of Taiwan, enforced by mines, submarines or surface ships, could serve different purposes for China. In one scenario, a blockade could be used as a prelude to invasion. One major disadvantage for Taiwan’s allies in the event of war is that, unlike Ukraine, it does not have friendly neighboring countries that could be used for ongoing military resupply. A blockade would thus render resupply for the island all but impossible. But it is also possible that China would use the blockade as an alternative to invasion; in this scenario, it would attempt to strangle Taiwan’s economy and force it to negotiate away its sovereignty without sending a single soldier to the island.

One prominent Chinese military textbook describes a “strategic blockade” as a tactic to “destroy the enemy’s external economic and military connections, degrade its operational capacity and war-fighting potential, and leave it isolated and unaided.”

Taiwan is uniquely vulnerable to such a tactic. Three ports — all located on the island’s west coast, facing China — handle around 90 percent of the island’s shipping, including most of its food and oil imports. Those imports amounted to a little under $20 billion last year alone.

When it comes to food, Taiwanese consumers are increasingly reliant on imports — namely wheat and corn products — although Taiwan is likely self-sufficient enough in rice, fruit, vegetables and wheat to get by in a worst-case scenario. The Taiwanese government has also begun stockpiling food and other critical supplies in preparation for a possible blockade.

Energy is another story. In 2021, Taiwan relied on imported fossil fuels — mainly liquefied natural gas and coal — for 97.7 percent of its energy supply. The island has only about 39 days’ worth of coal and an 11-day stockpile of gas. Taiwan is pouring billions of dollars into solar and wind energy — this is a country that has more reason than most to abandon fossil fuels — but is currently not on track to meet its 2025 targets for renewable energy production. The economic consequences of even a short or partial blockade could be disastrous.

Global spillover: a chip crisis

The economic effects of a blockade wouldn’t be limited to Taiwan or China. And nowhere would the global pain be felt more profoundly than when it comes to the world’s “smart” technologies. Put simply, a huge number of products that use microchips would face an immediate problem.

Taiwan produces the microchips used in nearly all the world’s smartphones, about a third of its PCs and countless other devices from cars to dishwashers. Chris Miller, a Tufts University professor and author of the recent book “Chip War” about the global semiconductor industry, painted the picture for Grid: If the world lost access to Taiwanese chips, in “week one, you would begin to see disruptions, and by week four to week eight, you would see really substantial disruptions not only to consumer electronics and tech goods, but also to all types of manufactured products.”

The United States’ 2022 Chips and Science Act, which encourages U.S. domestic semiconductor production, was in large part motivated by the desire to address this vulnerability — as was Beijing’s own Made in China 2025 Initiative. Even after this investment, the tech industries in both countries are still likely to be heavily dependent on Taiwanese chips, expertise and manufacturing equipment.

Experts sometimes refer to Taiwan’s vital role in the semiconductor industry as the “silicon shield”: the idea being that the economic costs, including to China, of cutting Taiwan off from the world are simply too high. But Miller pointed out that there are many examples of countries being willing to incur major economic costs to accomplish core political goals — and “reunification” with Taiwan is certainly a core political goal for the Chinese Communist Party. “I do worry that some people in Taiwan are overconfident about this,” he said.

Rising tensions in the Taiwan Strait, along with the ongoing disruptions to Black Sea trade caused by the Ukraine War, have also raised concerns that the era of relatively free and open global shipping that the world has enjoyed since World War II — and even more so since the end of the Cold War — is now coming to an end.

“If we start getting back into nationalistic shipping and interdicting other nations’ ability to trade, you know, that almost brings us back to the 17th-18th century, and it’s really risky,” Sal Mercogliano, a former merchant mariner and shipping historian, told Grid.

Blockade-lite?

While less risky for China than an invasion, a blockade still isn’t exactly a safe option. For one thing, a blockade is still an act of war under international law. Taiwan could try to use its own navy to break the blockade. And U.S. Navy commanders have talked openly about the possibility of the United States and its allies helping Taiwan to do so. In other words, a blockade could escalate quickly into exactly the scenario China is trying to avoid: a shooting war with the Americans.

Meanwhile, given how intertwined the two countries are, and how many Chinese citizens are employed by Taiwanese firms such as tech manufacturer Foxconn or shipping company Evergreen, the impact of a blockade on the Chinese economy would reach well beyond semiconductors.

“Without Taiwanese suppliers, China’s economy will grind to a halt quite quickly,” said Easton. “There would be massive unemployment in China. It’d be very, very difficult for them to pull off a protracted blockade of Taiwan without destroying themselves.”

For that reason, China could attempt to carry out a less intense, less blatant blockade. It could do this by having its coast guard (rather than navy) interdict and inspect ships traveling into Taiwanese waters — which according to Beijing are Chinese waters — in the name of drug enforcement, anti-piracy or some other pretext. Or China could start demanding that ships traveling to Taiwan first go through Chinese customs. This would have the effect of slowing rather than shutting down Taiwan trade entirely, making global shipping companies think twice about using these trade routes. The tactic might disrupt arms shipments to Taiwan as well. Of course, the risk is that Taiwan and the United States could apply the same approach to ships bound for China.

Information blockade

In the 21st century, we may need to expand our definition of “blockade.” Some experts who spoke with Grid suggested that China is more likely to cut off Taiwan’s information than its shipping. Taiwan’s internet access is dependent on 15 undersea cables, and there’s growing concern China could try to cut them. As an example of what this could look like — the nation of Mauritania was knocked off the internet for two days when an undersea cable was cut for unknown reasons in 2018.

While technologies such as Elon Musk’s Starlink have proved enormously effective at maintaining connectivity in Ukraine, it’s likely not sufficient to keep one of the most high-tech economies running.

Another advantage of an information blockade is that an act of sabotage that occurs deep under the ocean is much easier for a nation to deny — as opposed to, say, an interception of ship traffic in open waters. Four months after the destruction of an undersea oil pipeline in the Baltic Sea that Western leaders were quick to blame on Russia, investigators say they still can’t say for sure who was responsible.

Into the gray zone

China’s approach to Taiwan in the coming years is likely to involve escalating military activities short of all-out war. The 71 Chinese planes and seven ships that were sent into the Taiwan Strait in the last week of 2022 were a sign of this new normal.

These military displays could be combined with so-called gray zone tactics: provocative actions meant to undermine Taiwan’s political system and unnerve its population but which can’t be directly linked back to China. These could range in intensity from online information campaigns to targeted assassinations. Becca Wasser, a senior fellow and war gaming specialist at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), told Grid that the advantage of gray zone tactics is their “low cost” relative to options like an invasion or full blockade.

“It’s very difficult to foresee a scenario where the Pentagon is going to suggest entering into a broader war with China” unless China has itself committed a clear act of war, Wasser said.

None of these options is mutually exclusive. Wasser said it’s likely that gray zone tactics could be used in conjunction with economic pressure or military force. And even “military,” in this case, includes a spectrum of options. CNAS has also gamed out scenarios where rather than attacking Taiwan itself, China seizes one or more of the islands between the two countries. Such an attack, if successful, would be a major political and strategic blow to Taiwan, but if carried out quickly and successfully, it would be far less likely to result in an all-out war or international intervention.

Can China win in Taiwan without war?

While China clearly has a range of options short of invasion to pressure Taiwan, it’s less clear that any of them will accomplish Beijing’s goal of forcing Taiwan to abandon its autonomy and submit to full political control from Beijing. Decades of political and economic pressure have only turned public opinion in Taiwan more staunchly against Beijing. More concerted pressure, or even a full blockade, could produce a rally-round-the-flag effect that only stiffens Taiwan’s resolve.

Still, the pressure is likely to continue. It is likely to be dialed up ahead of Taiwan’s 2024 presidential elections and to spike in response to future American actions, along the lines of Pelosi’s visit, that are deemed provocative. (New House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is reportedly planning a visit of his own.)

The Chinese government is caught between an unacceptable status quo — Taiwan’s de facto independence — and a course of action, war, that would be unspeakably costly and might well be disastrous. For these reasons alone, there’s a good chance China will try every other conceivable option.