Agathe Demarais
Introduction
The year is 2028, and Western intelligence services have reached an alarming conclusion. Credible sources suggest that China is about to impose a maritime blockade around Taiwan – a step that intelligence officers believe will precede a full-scale invasion of the territory.
Western leaders can hardly claim that they were blindsided. Ever since Xi Jinping had become China’s leader in 2012, he had repeatedly stressed that “reunification” between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland was “inevitable”. He had gone on to affirm that such a “reunification” was an integral part of his plans for the “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”. Xi’s threats had crystallised in 2023, when American intelligence services believe he had ordered Chinese military forces to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.
As the world braces for impact, the European Union and its 27 member states scramble to assess their economic statecraft options. They know that the EU is not prepared for a Taiwan conflict scenario; the bloc has a longstanding tendency to hope for the best and ignore the worst until it happens. But all is not lost. The EU and its member states have plenty of experience pursuing their foreign policy aims through economic statecraft tools, including financial sanctions, trade restrictions, and export controls. Crucially, they can derive insights from the extensive sanctions that they have been imposing on Russia since Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.
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