Taiwan: Is a Chinese Invasion Inevitable?

On October 23rd, 2022, Xi Jinping was officially reelected as the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, securing him another five years as the nation’s leader, though to many it is already clear that he intends to rule for life. This also means that Xi’s policies will stay dominant for the foreseeable future, including his zero-Covid policy, continued membership in the BRICS economic union, and, of course, his reunification rhetoric surrounding Taiwan. Xi has openly ordered the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to be capable of taking Taiwan by force by 2027, and as relations with the West become more and more strained, it may seem that an invasion of Taiwan is no longer a matter of if, but rather a matter of when. The reality of the situation, however, is far more complex than meets the eye.

Origins of the Conflict: The Chinese Civil War and Taiwan’s Founding

The roots of the Taiwan question stretch back nearly a century, to the Chinese Civil War that began in 1927. The war was fought between the nationalists, led by Kai-shek Chiang, and the communists, led by Mao Zedong. Battles and skirmishes filled the nation for nearly a decade, but hostilities took a break in the late 1930s when Japan began its conquest of China.

With a common enemy, the nationalists and communists largely put aside their differences to save their country, though they still routinely fought each other and struggled to work in harmony. This was only a brief pause, and the violence resumed almost immediately once a Japanese surrender to the allies was deemed imminent. The civil war became more vicious than ever.

Soon, the tides of war began to shift, and the communists began capturing large swaths of territory. Entire provinces fell as the nationalists retreated toward the coast, including major cities like Beijing and Nanjing, with hundreds of thousands of casualties mounting with every year. Beginning in August 1949, the nationalists began their official relocation to the island of Taiwan, with more than 50 daily flights carrying people, supplies, and lots of gold across the sea and away from the advancing communists.

By the following year, all of mainland China had fallen, and Mao Zedong established the People’s Republic of China, or PRC, not to be confused with the Republic of China, or ROC, that was now confined to Taiwan and a few scattered islands in the area. Both governments continued to lay claim to the entirety of China, and in the 1950s there were two separate crises in the Taiwan Strait, with hundreds being killed in some fairly serious skirmishes, but these both managed to fizzle out without escalating into all-out war. The ROC even drew up plans to invade and reoccupy mainland China, which, if carried out, would have been the largest seaborne invasion in history, but these plans were scrapped.

Diplomatic Isolation and the One-China Policy

The next important piece of history is United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758, passed on October 25th, 1971, when the UN officially accepted the PRC, simultaneously expelling the ROC. The People’s Republic of China was recognized as the legitimate successor, and to this day Taiwan is only officially recognized by 13 UN members and the Vatican. Many other nations have diplomatic relations with Taiwan and maintain close ties to the island, but to officially recognize it as an independent country means to jeopardize relations with China — a big deal in the 21st century now that China has the world’s second largest GDP.

By the 1980s, the situation was starting to calm down, and trade started to resume between the two on a fairly large scale. In 1991, Taiwan officially declared an end to the state of war, though no treaty was ever signed, and relations slowly thawed over the years to come. But the core issue was never really resolved.

China asserts its One-China policy, stating that Taiwan is nothing more than a rebellious region of the mainland that will eventually be reunited, a similar policy that it holds with both Hong Kong and Macau. In Taiwan, there are two main schools of thought — the Pan-Blue Coalition, which has its own reverse version of One-China, believing that the Republic of China is the sole owner of both Taiwan and the mainland, while the Pan-Green Coalition seeks to have Taiwan formally recognized as its own nation and refuses reunification at any cost. Without a clear resolution, the question remains: did the Chinese Civil War ever really end?

Perhaps not, and it is very possible that hostilities could resume in the near future.

Escalating Tensions Since 2016

While things seemed to be warming up across the Taiwan Strait for a while, relations started heading downhill pretty sharply around the year 2016. This is when Tsai Ing-wen was elected president of Taiwan, a politician firmly against reunification with the mainland. China was not happy about this and started limiting Chinese tour groups to the island, among other economic measures such as banning pineapple imports, as a way to show disapproval.

In 2018, a coalition was formed within Taiwan known as the Formosa Alliance. The alliance was formed out of a movement to hold an official independence referendum, which would also include formally ditching the name ‘Republic of China’ and officially replacing it with ‘Taiwan’, as well as applying for membership in the UN. China held military exercises in the waters around Taiwan following this announcement, hoping to dissuade the people and government from making any serious decisions.

Things only got worse from there. Over the months and years since, Chinese fighter jets have repeatedly violated Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ, probing its reactions and response times, with more than 900 violations in 2021 alone. Public opinion in Taiwan has grown stronger in favor of outright independence, and President Tsai has given several firm speeches directed at the Chinese Communist Party, including one where she stated that the island would refuse to bow down to the PRC.

At the same time, public opinion in China has been turning against Taiwan, especially within the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. Victor Gao, a media spokesman for the party, stated in an interview that if China were to take over Taiwan, they should initiate the ethnic cleansing of anyone with Japanese ancestry — a shocking statement to say the least. Later in 2021, a prominent Chinese tabloid, funded mostly by the government, called for the ‘Final Solution to the Taiwan Question’, an obvious reference to the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’ that had preceded the Holocaust.

In mid-2022, China’s defense minister warned that if anyone tries to split Taiwan from China, Beijing will not hesitate to start a war.

The Full-Scale Invasion Scenario and Why It Would Be Catastrophic

If China truly intends to reunify with Taiwan in the coming years, Xi Jinping has a few main options, the first of which is a conventional invasion and forceful takeover. Fears of this spiked in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, and many wondered if a simultaneous Chinese invasion of Taiwan was being planned. After all, it might seem like the two situations are similar, with a regional superpower trying to exert its influence on a smaller neighbor, but in reality the two situations could not be any further from each other.

Whereas Russian tanks simply rolled across the border into Ukraine, Taiwan is an island, so China would have no choice but to launch an amphibious assault, akin to the D-Day landings of Normandy in World War 2. Such an attack would require hundreds of thousands, if not more than a million troops, and would be a difficult task even for China, who commands one of the most powerful armed forces on the globe. China has been developing landing craft specifically for this type of attack, but getting them to Taiwan’s beaches means first getting through their navy and evading sea mines and anti-ship missiles.

The invasion would likely begin with a full naval blockade. Once the invading forces made it to the beach, they would then have to contend with coastal defense missiles, howitzers, and a fully mobilizing Taiwanese population. The fight would also fill the sky with fire as China’s air force clashed with Taiwan’s for air superiority.

Taiwan has been acquiring large numbers of battle-proven US-made jets like the F-16 and F-5, which would all be scrambled at a moment’s notice to meet the arriving Chinese aircraft, all while anti-air batteries fired surface-to-air missiles on an island-wide scale. All of this sounds difficult already, but it only gets exponentially harder when factoring in that Taiwan would not be alone in defending their island. Though Taiwan is designated as a major non-NATO ally, the US has long held a rather neutral stance of supporting the ‘status quo’ in the region.

But this stance has cleared up recently as President Biden made it very clear that America would intervene if a war were ever to break out. Alongside the United States would likely be other allies in the Pacific, such as Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. This means that in order to capture and occupy Taiwan, China would have to launch a lightning-fast attack, surrounding the island and crushing its defenses before anyone else had a chance to get in the way.

An invasion of Taiwan would require an even larger buildup of military equipment than Russia’s around Ukraine, centered entirely on China’s coastline. Unless this buildup could be miraculously hidden from the prying eyes of satellites, it would be spotted by the world as soon as it began, giving Taiwan’s allies plenty of time to gather their forces. Learning from Ukraine’s stunning successes against Russia — who was thought to be the second most powerful armed force in the world pre-invasion — Taiwan may have a better chance of defending itself than many originally thought.

Some analysts suggest that Taiwan ditch the idea of investing in expensive fighter jets and submarines, and instead build up a large network of defenses made up of numerous smaller weapons, a tactic known as ‘porcupine defense’.

The Silicon Shield: Why Semiconductors Deter Invasion

Even if China believed that such a war were winnable, a conflict of such scale with these powers would be absolutely catastrophic for the global economy, and this alone could deter China from doing something so drastic. China would certainly be sanctioned by western powers, and being such a global powerhouse of exports, these sanctions would ripple across the world. Destroying Taiwan’s economy in the process would put their $850 billion dollar GDP in the toilet — that is more than four times the GDP of Ukraine, and the world has already seen what happened to the global economy when that was disrupted.

But there is one specific product that, alone, could be the ultimate deterrence: semiconductor chips. Semiconductors are extremely complex microchips that are crucial for modern electronic dependence, found in everything from cell phones to fighter jets to Toyota Camrys. Every developed nation in the world has these little circuits at the heart of their economies, and Taiwan is by far the world’s largest manufacturer of them.

One single enterprise, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited, or TSMC, produces 53% of the globe’s semiconductors. TSMC not only produces the most chips, but also the smallest and most advanced, and has engineers working in three rotating shifts to ensure production runs smoothly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. China alone accounts for 60% of chip purchases.

If China were able to somehow occupy the island and assume control over these factories, it could, overnight, shut the United States and its allies out of the semiconductor market, giving China a massive advantage over its modern geopolitical opponent. This is yet another reason why the US is so keen to defend Taiwan — it is rather dangerous that the metaphorical beating heart of NATO’s military might is so close to one of their greatest adversaries. However, in the event of an invasion, it is more than likely that these critical chip factories would be destroyed, damaged, or even intentionally sabotaged.

This would cause a global chip shortage on an unprecedented scale. The effects of a minor chip shortage from factory shutdowns during the pandemic caused hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue to be lost across dozens of sectors, as well as shortages of cars, smartphones, and even game consoles. If Taiwan’s factories were to be completely shut down or disabled, the global economy would be plunged into the abyss, as nations scrambled to replace their previously outsourced commodity, losing trillions of dollars in the process.

It is as if Taiwan is holding the world supply chain in its hands, threatening to crush it if China makes the wrong move. This is often referred to as the ‘Silicon Shield’. The shield could deteriorate in the coming decades as countries like the US and China are investing hundreds of billions of dollars into their own semiconductor industries, but at least for the foreseeable future, Taiwan has the monopoly.

A Limited Island-Hopping Strategy

If China deems the semiconductor industry too valuable to risk in an invasion, and wants to avoid potential nuclear escalation with the United States, other options remain. Instead of a full-scale invasion with the aim of capturing Taipei, China could launch a smaller-scale invasion of other Taiwanese islands. The majority of Taiwan’s population lives on the main island where the capital is located, but Taiwan also governs several smaller islands.

For instance, the Kinmen islands are right next to China — just 10 kilometers, or 6 miles, from Xiamen. China would easily be able to overrun this island and its population of 130,000. This could quickly be accomplished before anyone would be able to intervene, and with little preparation.

The Kinmen islands are not the only viable targets for such an operation — there is also Orchid Island, Turtle Island, the 36 Matsu islands, or the 90 Penghu islands, all of which fell under the control of Taipei following the civil war. Any one of these could become the victim of a sudden invasion, with China betting that the smaller-scale conflict would not arouse any serious response from Taiwan or its allies. Invasions of these smaller islands could be used to test the response of the West, to what extent nations will stand up for Taiwan, and just how much China can get away with.

If, for example, there is no serious consequence, China can continue its conquest of these smaller outcrops, much like it already continues to violate Taiwan’s airspace multiple times a day. Establishing military bases on these newly occupied islands would bring the Chinese military ever closer to their enemy, making a full-scale invasion all the more possible.

The Quiet Takeover: Lessons from Hong Kong

At the end of the day, any military action carries a huge risk of retaliation, whether that retaliation be military or financial. That brings consideration to Xi’s final option for reunifying with Taiwan — a quiet takeover. A slow but methodical reintegration into the People’s Republic of China, step by step bringing Taiwan under Beijing’s full control.

Such a takeover has already happened — with Hong Kong. Hong Kong was a British colony for much of recent history and was only formally handed over to China in 1997 as a special administrative region. Hong Kong was promised continued economic and political independence from China and maintained its own governing systems for many years.

This was known as the ‘one country, two systems’ policy. However, in recent years, China has begun taking drastic steps to reduce Hong Kong’s autonomy, such as a 2019 legislative proposal that would allow Beijing to extradite citizens of Hong Kong back to mainland China. Huge protests erupted as a result, and there were reports of mass police brutality, including rubber bullets and tear gas, but these protests were largely cut short by the emergence of COVID-19 the following year.

Beijing made an even more brazen step in June 2020 when it imposed the ‘national security law’ over Hong Kong, criminalizing any activity deemed anti-China and allowing for a Chinese security force to be present in the city. Then, in 2021, China overhauled Hong Kong’s election system, making it possible for only a select few candidates to be on the ballot, who were, of course, supporters of the Chinese Communist Party. In the 2022 Chief Executive Election, only a single name, John Lee, was on the ballot.

In October 2022, Xi Jinping gave a speech at an exhibition called ‘Forging Ahead in the New Era’, during which he stated that China had achieved comprehensive control over Hong Kong and had turned it from chaos to governance. He also said: “We have resolutely waged a major struggle against separatism and interference, demonstrating our strong determination and ability to safeguard state sovereignty and territorial integrity and oppose Taiwan independence.” This type of political takeover, rather than a military invasion, seems to be the more probable choice with Taiwan, but it will also be a major challenge for Beijing.

Hong Kong is at least connected to the Chinese mainland and was under a completely different precedent that allowed China to begin undermining its autonomy. With Taiwan, however, the path ahead is not so clear, and any such moves will be strongly opposed by the Taiwanese people. Taiwan continues to grow in global and regional significance, and it is only a matter of time before it makes the crucial decision regarding independence and application to the UN.

China, therefore, is in a bit of a rush — if it intends to reunify with Taiwan, it must do so before the island slips out of its hands forever. The United States has no intention of letting this happen. It appears that a new cold war is arriving, and there is no telling how or when it will be resolved.