The Porcupine Strategy: How Taiwan Plans to Survive a Chinese Invasion

The Republic of China is a state under siege. Based on the island of Formosa, now known as Taiwan, the Republic of China, or ROC, lives in a condition of semi-permanent exile imposed by its main rival: the People’s Republic of China, which today controls the entire Chinese mainland and is recognized as the one true Chinese state by a majority of world nations. The PRC claims Formosa as part of its territory, and claims the ROC’s population as its own. Stuck on an island of some 24 million people, Taiwan has no realistic hope of ever taking back a mainland whose population is close to 100 times its size.

Given that staggering disparity, it can seem surprising that the Communist Party on the mainland continues to permit Taiwan to exist at all. The reason it does lies in a military doctrine colloquially known as the porcupine strategy. Taiwan understands the threat coming from China perfectly well, and it understands that it could not hold out for long under direct assault. So instead, Taiwan has chosen to make a solemn promise to the People’s Republic of China: attack us, and for as long as we live, we will make you bleed.

We will show you pain, and we will make you regret ever setting foot on our island.

Key Takeaways

Taiwan’s defense rests on deterrence rather than conquest: convincing China that an invasion would cost more than it could possibly be worth, much like the quills of a porcupine make a predator think twice.
Three factors make deterrence especially suited to Taiwan: its position as an island roughly a hundred miles offshore, its limited room to maneuver on Formosa, and the foreign aid — overwhelmingly American — that supplies weapons it could never fully fund alone.
The Overall Defense Concept organizes Taiwan’s forces into three concentric rings — intelligence, the sea, and the island itself — built around asymmetric tactics, redundancy, and a willingness to absorb horrific losses.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reshaped Taiwan’s thinking, prompting a one-year conscription period, women in reserve training, large medical stockpiles, and a shift toward small, unconventional arms.
A 2023 CSIS study ran dozens of war games and concluded Taiwan can survive only if four conditions are met; even in victory, the island and its allies suffer devastating losses every single time.

It is this promise that defines Taiwan’s entire approach to its own survival, a doctrine that has kept the island independent so far. The question that hangs over the strait is whether that same strategy can keep protecting Taiwan into the future.

Theory and Praxis: The Logic of Deterrence

To understand what Taiwan is actually doing, it helps to step away from the specific antagonists for a moment and examine the underlying principles in a vacuum. At its core, Taiwan’s strategy is based on deterrence: an effort to convince an enemy nation that it does not want to start a conflict, because of the severe costs the defender could impose in response to an attack. In the world of nuclear warfare, deterrence is widely recognized as the main reason the United States and the Soviet Union never began dropping hydrogen bombs on each other.

If one side attacked, it knew the other could and would retaliate before being wiped out. Everyone gets bombarded; everyone loses, even if the aggressor technically destroys its enemy.

In conventional warfare, deterrence is a somewhat different beast, but it operates on the same logic. Much like the sharp quills of a porcupine make it dangerous for a predator to attack from behind, a military porcupine strategy is meant to make one’s own nation look like more trouble than it is worth. Assume an invading country must march its army all the way to the defender’s capital and seize it. A nation practicing conventional deterrence makes it exceptionally clear that it can shred that invading army to pieces along the way — by hit-and-run attacks, direct confrontation, booby traps, bombing runs, or anything else.

The message the defender needs to send is precise: even if a handful of surviving troops reach the capital, the invader’s army will have suffered so horrifically that it would have been far better never to invade at all. That is the bargain deterrence offers, and it is the bargain at the heart of Taiwan’s defense.

Why Deterrence Fits Taiwan in Particular

This area is something of a nomenclature minefield, but for clarity the Republic of China is referred to here as Taiwan, and the People’s Republic of China as China. When the principles of conventional deterrence are examined closely, they make particular sense for Taiwan for three main reasons.

First, Taiwan is an island nation, located roughly a hundred miles off the coast of the Chinese mainland. That geography is already a major advantage. Chinese aircraft could strafe Taiwan from their home bases, but any ground invasion would require an armada of ships — and any vessel that could be sunk or incapacitated would take hundreds or even thousands of Chinese troops down with it. A sea crossing inherently buys Taiwan time and opportunities to flay an invading force before it reaches land, imposing costs China might not be willing to accept.

Second, Taiwan is constrained by its limited ability to maneuver on Formosa itself. The island is not tiny, but it offers only so many places where Taiwanese forces could hold back China before the enemy reached the capital, Taipei. That makes it far more cost-effective for Taiwan to invest in an air force, anti-air and anti-ship defenses, and a coastal defense fleet than to maintain a standing army capable of rivaling China’s. Deterrence does not merely make sense for Taiwan; it makes more sense than preparing for open, conventional battles on the island.

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Third, despite the PRC’s diplomatic recognition across most of the world, Taiwan receives enormous tangible support from countries like the United States. On its own, Taiwan would have nowhere near the economic power required to fund a successful military defense against the PRC. International backing cannot solve every problem — it cannot, for instance, put more people into Taiwan’s standing military.

But it can supply weapons, ammunition, and equipment. It does not take a strategic genius to see that weapons capable of deterring a Chinese attack are more valuable than, say, handing Taiwan so many guns that there would not be enough soldiers to fire them.

Taken together, these factors make deterrence the most cost-effective and realistic way for Taiwan to maintain its sovereignty, while ruling out the alternatives. In an ideal world, this approach could conceivably prevent China from ever attacking — and to date, China has indeed been dissuaded from making that move. Even if Taiwan cannot dissuade China forever, deterrence buys precious time to acquire better weaponry, refine its strategy, and demonstrate just how much damage it could inflict before going down.

Stockpiles and Capabilities: An Arsenal Meant to Be Seen

Most nations have a general interest in concealing the full extent of their military capabilities. Surprise is valuable, and unveiling a new weapon in the heat of battle can be a decisive advantage. But for Taiwan and other states that depend on deterrence, secrecy actually works against them. China cannot be frightened away from an attack by a weapons system or technology it does not know exists.

As a result, Taiwan is heavily incentivized to make crystal clear to China exactly what it has in its arsenal, how it intends to defend Formosa, and just how willing it is to unleash hell.

On the most basic level, the Republic of China Armed Forces field an active-duty force of 215,000 — roughly a tenth the size of the PRC’s two-million-strong defense forces. But Taiwan relies on a system of mandatory military service, conscripting citizens at age 18. As a result, its pool of reservists is far larger, somewhere around two-and-a-quarter million, with the presumption that nearly all of them would be willing to enter active service under threat of a Chinese invasion. That reserve depth is central to the entire deterrent posture.

Then there is the equipment. The Republic of China Army fields over a thousand relatively older tanks, with about a hundred US-made Abrams tanks on back-order, plus a comparable number of personnel carriers and tens of thousands of Hummers and Jeeps. More important are its many thousands of artillery pieces, missile launchers, advanced US-made attack helicopters, and an arsenal of anti-air and anti-tank missiles tuned to defend against an invasion from the sea.

At sea, the Republic of China Navy operates four destroyers, twenty-two frigates, eleven corvettes, a handful of submarines, and dozens of auxiliary attack ships — armed with anti-ship missiles powerful enough to make any invader think twice. In the air, the Republic of China Air Force has been consistently frustrated by the United States’ refusal to provide fifth-generation F-35 fighters, but it makes do with well over a hundred American F-16s and 103 indigenously produced Ching-Kuo fighters, carrying all the missiles and bombs a fighter pilot could want.

The Overall Defense Concept: Three Concentric Rings

Taiwan’s plan for actually using these stockpiles takes the form of three concentric rings of defense around the island. The first ring is about intelligence and spycraft. Taiwan must determine China’s most likely invasion route on any given day and be prepared to react in real time, with troops, equipment, and plans aimed at the right places, at the right strength, to hold out.

The second ring is the sea, where Taiwan’s fleet is primed to wage asymmetric, guerrilla-style warfare, backed by advanced aircraft overhead. Crucially, these ships and planes are not expected to survive. Their purpose is to buy time and to bring down as many of the enemy as possible. The third layer takes place on the island itself, using terrain and cityscapes to fight tooth and nail with the same gritty, asymmetric tactics employed at sea.

Overseeing the entire three-ring structure are Taiwan’s early-warning systems, which all but rule out a surprise attack and help prepare the island to absorb the missile strikes and air campaign that would almost certainly precede any invasion by sea. The reality, though, is blunt: if China invaded anyway, it would not be the only side taking heavy casualties. The human cost on Taiwan would be horrific — indeed, this defensive architecture all but ensures it. Deterrence works precisely because Taiwan is willing to accept those losses, whereas China might not be so certain it is.

Together, these stockpiles and defensive principles constitute what is known as the Overall Defense Concept. Taiwan has detailed plans for how to employ its troops and equipment at each ring, stressing high-mobility counterattacks, camouflage, deception, and the ability to rapidly repair and maintain equipment so it can be sent straight back into battle. The island’s jungles, mountains, and cities are all part of the plan, and the system is built to be redundant: any single base or airfield is protected by all the others. This kind of interlocking, multi-stage defense is Taiwan’s best chance to be utterly unpalatable to China — a threat when provoked, rather than docile prey.

Global Support: The American Umbrella and Its Limits

As the sheer volume of American kit in Taiwan’s arsenal suggests, the United States has been a major military ally over the course of Taiwan’s history. Although Washington maintains formal diplomatic relations with Beijing rather than Taipei, its arms deals and monetary support have overwhelmingly favored Taiwan over the mainland. The US no longer maintains an official military presence on Taiwan, but it operates several bases in the Philippines, Japan, and South Korea, all of which place the island under a sort of protective umbrella.

The militaries of America and Taiwan share a long history of joint training exercises, and the US provides material support across several aspects of the Taiwanese military, including air-to-air refueling for its aircraft. There is, however, a clear limit. The United States has consistently opposed Taiwan acquiring nuclear weapons. Though Taiwan has the breakout capability to produce a nuclear warhead using knowledge from its prior civil nuclear program, American pressure has so far succeeded in preventing full nuclearization.

Beyond the United States, international support for Taiwan has become a significant global flashpoint in the past year or two, as several Latin American nations have withdrawn their backing in favor of strengthening economic ties with mainland China. The European Union, Japan, and Singapore have nonetheless maintained clear military links with Taipei. Japan has even passed legislation allowing it to deploy forces in defense of a regional ally — a phrase nearly universally understood to mean Taiwan.

The Ukraine Effect: A Live Test of Taiwan’s Assumptions

Yet the development with the largest recent impact on Taiwan’s thinking has not been any of these allies. It has been Ukraine, and more specifically the Ukrainian defense against Russia’s large-scale invasion. The parallels are abundant: both Taiwan and Ukraine are smaller, less-equipped military powers whose major-power neighbor seeks to enforce a perceived claim to their territory. Ukraine’s defense has therefore become a valuable opportunity to test many of Taiwan’s assumptions about its own situation — how well its military might hold up, how long a war could last, how costly it might be, and how faithful the international community would prove to be.

In many ways, the bungled Russian invasion is likely to help Taiwan’s case. China’s leadership, including Xi Jinping, tends to be far more risk-averse and militarily cautious than Vladimir Putin and his circle. With such a catastrophically detailed example of how badly an invasion can go, it is not unthinkable that Beijing has revised its estimate of just how difficult invading Taiwan would be.

The war has confirmed that if a plan fails and forces get bogged down, momentum is not easily restarted. And invading Taiwan by sea is considerably harder than invading Ukraine by land — so a China already facing an uphill fight may now harbor more serious second thoughts.

The invasion has also driven home to Taiwan how essential preparation is. Done correctly, a defense of Ukraine appears to be working, but it is not hard to imagine a less-prepared version of that country being overrun in weeks. Since Russia invaded, Taiwan’s public has been far more willing to engage with its own military, with significantly greater acknowledgement of the need for a strong reserve force. The war’s emphasis on small, unconventional arms like handheld missiles and naval drones has offered a useful roadmap for future Taiwanese spending.

The concrete policy shifts have followed. Civil leaders have ordered Taiwan to stockpile over a year’s worth of critical drugs, plus a six-month supply of all other medicines, in direct response to the Ukrainian invasion. In 2022, women were included in Taiwan’s reserve training programs for the first time. And the mandatory conscription period — fixed at four months per citizen since 2012 — has now been extended to a full year.

There is a final reality check for China embedded in all of this. The international community has shown it is not afraid to send money and weapons to a beleaguered partner. In a scenario involving Taiwan, with Japan, South Korea, the United States, and possibly even Britain, Australia, and the Philippines potentially prepared to provide direct military aid — in a way nobody has been willing to do for Ukraine — a bad situation can turn nightmarish.

The fierce resistance in Ukraine has, one hopes, signaled to China that the Taiwanese population is unlikely to simply roll over if a fleet masses for invasion. Instead, they would take up arms, set aside their internal divisions, and rush to their country’s defense.

It is the same hard lesson Russia has repeatedly failed to absorb in Chechnya, Georgia, and now Ukraine. For a major power, these invasions are about territory, resources, and ultimately politics. For countries like Ukraine or Taiwan, they are a question of survival — and a nation fighting for its survival will always field more motivated, more courageous, and more ruthless troops in its own defense. The only real question is whether those troops can slow the enemy long enough to sue for peace before being overrun by sheer numbers.

In Taiwan’s case, it is not inconceivable that they could.

War Games: What the Modeling Reveals

When imagining how a Chinese attempt to invade Taiwan would unfold, there is no need to rely entirely on imagination. Taiwan, China, the United States, and others have invested heavily in modeling the conflict through war games. In early 2023, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, released the most up-to-date publicly available analysis of a potential invasion. CSIS ran dozens of war games across a range of changing baseline conditions, and the results, taken as a whole, speak volumes about what Taiwan must do to defend itself.

The main conclusions are sobering. According to CSIS, four conditions are necessary for Taiwan to survive a Chinese invasion: Taiwan itself must resist tooth and nail; the United States must join the fight with the full force of its military, not merely token support; the United States must be able to use its air bases in Japan; and the United States must possess a sufficient number of long-range anti-ship missiles. Even when all four conditions are met, a successful defense costs dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of troops from Taiwanese, US, and other allied forces — every single time.

The games Taiwan won wrecked the Chinese military, but they also devastated Taiwan, including lost access to power, basic infrastructure, and support services. That is the best-case scenario.

The first group of outcomes was the so-called base scenario, in which a US-led coalition aided Taiwan and repelled the invasion. In these runs, the United States lost at least two aircraft carriers every single time, and Taiwan lost a massive portion of its airfleet and its entire navy, even though Chinese forces rarely broke through to land. Taiwan would survive, somewhat decisively, but at enormous cost to itself and its global partners.

Then came the pessimistic scenarios, which built in delayed US mobilization, late engagement, Taiwanese operational incompetence, and an American unwillingness to strike the Chinese mainland. These went a good deal better for China. Yet of eighteen scenarios, none produced a clear Chinese occupation of Taiwan. Most ended in stalemate, while a few ended in clear Chinese defeat — not awful news for Taiwan, though the losses ran far heavier.

The optimistic scenarios incorporated better US-Japan cooperation, Chinese hesitancy to use its missile arsenal, superior aircraft and pilots for the US relative to China, and early Japanese authorization to use lethal force. Unsurprisingly, these led to a Chinese defeat in which only a minimal foothold on Taiwan could be established. Every Chinese amphibious ship was sunk, along with most of its naval vessels, while American, Taiwanese, and Japanese losses were far lower. These runs assumed both sides would make peace once China was defeated — though it is entirely feasible the allied coalition might instead have chosen to take the fight to Chinese soil.

The Worst Cases: Abandonment, Ragnarok, and the Nuclear Shadow

Then there is the scenario in which Taiwan ends up alone, with no material assistance from the United States. When this played out, Taiwan was crushed decisively. Roughly ten weeks elapsed from the start of hostilities to the moment China raised its flag over Taipei’s Presidential Palace. Urban combat in the streets of Taipei and other cities did slow the Chinese down, and some 23,000 Chinese soldiers would die in the attack — but Taiwan would be utterly destroyed in the process.

Finally, there was a scenario known as Ragnarok: a situation engineered to give China the conditions it needed to win, however unrealistic. The constraints on Taiwan and its allies were far heavier. US planes could not take part if Japan stayed neutral, which it did, and American bombers would be intercepted or warded off by surface-to-air missiles — an outcome that is not especially realistic in practice.

The fight remained very costly for China, but the US was mostly unable to defend Taiwan until it could arrive with a super-fleet of two aircraft carriers, ten submarines, and some thirty other combat ships. By then China was ready, destroying most of the fleet while successfully locking down Taiwan. The outcome was devastating for the United States and spelled a complete end to the nation of Taiwan.

It is impossible to overstate how costly every one of these scenarios was for all sides. Almost all involved either partial or total destruction of the Taiwanese military, most imposed costs on China that would take decades to rebuild, and the vast majority produced repercussions for the US — particularly in combat deaths — that would border on unthinkable for the United States of today. As the CSIS report notes, most classified Department of Defense war games actually come out more favorably for China than these public ones did. Why that is remains unclear, but it is worth bearing in mind that the worst-case outcomes in the public set might resemble the best-case outcomes when weighed against the classified versions.

There is one threat the war games did not directly address: nuclear weapons. Taiwan itself has no nuclear warheads, but a US entry into the conflict would place two nuclear-armed nations on opposing sides — and in that situation, there is no guarantee the conflict could not escalate until those weapons were used. The costs of such an outcome lie far beyond anything a conventional war could produce.

It is not for any analyst to decide whether sacrificing Taiwan outright might be worth avoiding a nuclear exchange, but that question is undeniably part of the global calculus. Very few of these scenarios featured a situation where American and Chinese troops did not face off directly, and in every game where they did, the threat of nuclear escalation quickly became plausible.

A Strategy That Has to Work

With stakes this high, it becomes even more important to determine whether Taiwan can ultimately deter China from attacking at all. Whether the war games end in a Chinese victory or a Taiwanese one, every single outcome involves a level of death and destruction the world does not appear ready to stomach. And from there it only gets worse: there is a certain level of devastation that will accompany any war between China and Taiwan, and a far worse level that might follow behind it.

This is where it becomes truly evident that Taiwan’s porcupine strategy has to work — and it really does have to work. The alternative is a nightmare scenario, no matter how the question is framed. The hope, simply put, is that such a future never comes to pass.

Presented by

Simon Whistler

Simon Whistler is one of YouTube's most prolific educational creators. WarFronts is his deep dive into military history and conflict analysis.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Taiwan’s porcupine strategy?

It is a deterrence doctrine designed to convince China that invading Taiwan would cost far more than it could possibly be worth. Rather than trying to match China’s military head-on, Taiwan aims to make itself so painful to attack — like a porcupine bristling with quills — that an invader concludes the assault is simply not worth attempting. That credible threat of pain is the main reason a Chinese invasion has so far been avoided.

Why does Taiwan publicize its military capabilities instead of hiding them?

Because deterrence only works if the adversary knows what it is up against. China cannot be frightened away by a weapon or system it does not know exists. So Taiwan is incentivized to make its arsenal, its defensive plans, and its willingness to fight as visible as possible to Beijing — the opposite of the secrecy most nations prefer.

What is the Overall Defense Concept?

It is the framework tying together Taiwan’s stockpiles and defensive principles into three concentric rings: an intelligence ring focused on detecting and anticipating an attack, a sea ring where ships and aircraft wage asymmetric warfare to buy time, and an island ring where forces fight through terrain and cities. It emphasizes high-mobility counterattacks, camouflage, deception, rapid equipment repair, and a redundant network in which each base is protected by the others.

What did the 2023 CSIS war games conclude about a Chinese invasion?

That Taiwan can survive only if four conditions are met: Taiwan resists tooth and nail, the United States joins with the full force of its military, the US can use its air bases in Japan, and the US possesses enough long-range anti-ship missiles. Across dozens of scenarios, no run produced a clear Chinese occupation when those conditions held — but even victory cost Taiwan and its allies dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of troops every single time.

What happens in the war games if the United States does not help Taiwan?

Taiwan is crushed decisively. In the scenario where it stood alone with no US material assistance, China raised its flag over Taipei’s Presidential Palace roughly ten weeks after hostilities began. Urban combat slowed the advance and killed some 23,000 Chinese soldiers, but Taiwan was utterly destroyed in the process. Most classified Pentagon war games are believed to come out more favorably for China than these public ones did.