China’s recent military drills near Taiwan confirm the suspicion of some observers that if the mainland follows through on its decades-long threat to conquer the Republic of China, China would more likely “blockade, not invade, Taiwan” (Asia Times, October 19, 2024).
Denny Roy, an analyst, not always a good one, for the East-West Center, argues that the October 14, 2024 PRC military exercise to harass Taiwan, Joint Sword 2024B, “seemed mostly a rehearsal for a blockade. The Chinese Coast Guard’s (CCG) participation was prominent and much hyped by PRC spokespeople and the media. The CCG would be a major player, as important as the PLA Navy, in a blockade scenario….
“The fact that Joint Sword 2024B was the most recent exercise and highlighted operations relevant to a blockade possibly indicates that PRC military planners have concluded they prefer a blockade to an invasion if China decides to take military action against Taiwan.”
A blockade would be a more flexible strategy. It could be enforced “stringently or loosely” and turned on and off and on again depending upon the responses of the ROC government and other governments. It may enable China to annex Taiwan without the enormous bloodshed of an invasion.
A blockade would be awful “and might result in a US-China war. The scale of the violence and mayhem unleashed by an attempted invasion, however, would be much worse.”
But exactly why a blockade would be the lesser of two evils from Roy’s perspective is not fully clear, since he also stresses the possibility that the United States would not be as effective in helping Taiwan in the case of a blockade: a blockade “would pit a Chinese strength, gray zone tactics, against an American weakness, impatience.”
The Chinese ships would, he says, keep the U.S. ships “in a state of rules-of-engagement limbo for months or even years until the Americans decided to withdraw.”
Also see:
StopTheChinazis.org: “What War Between Beijing and Taipei Would Really Mean”
