China and Taiwan: Invasion or Blockade?

In this episode of Fair Game, Dr. Gary Kellner asks whether we have been watching for the wrong war. The familiar question is whether China will invade Taiwan. Dr. Kellner points instead to the older strategy of siege: isolate an adversary, interrupt what sustains it, and force political submission before an invading army ever has to occupy the ground. Taiwan’s recent military exercises suggest that its leaders are preparing for precisely that possibility. But before asking whether China can blockade Taiwan, there is another question Americans rarely stop long enough to ask: Who exactly is Taiwan—and who gets to decide what it becomes?

WHAT IS TAIWAN?

Taiwan is an island nation of  23 million people with its own elected president, legislature, courts, military, currency and passports. It governs itself. Beijing does not govern it and never has under the People’s Republic of China. Yet China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and insists that reunification is ultimately inevitable.

That is where the simplicity ends.

Taiwan’s official name is still the Republic of China, a remnant of the Chinese Civil War that drove Chiang Kai-shek’s government from the mainland to Taiwan in 1949.

Beijing is the People’s Republic of China.

For decades, each claimed to represent China. Today, Taiwan functions in almost every ordinary sense as a self-governing country, while its formal international status remains deliberately unresolved and fiercely contested.

And then there are the people who actually live there.

They are not simply Chinese people temporarily separated from China. Taiwan has its own history, its own Indigenous peoples, generations of migration from mainland China, fifty years of Japanese rule, the enormous upheaval of 1949, and decades of political evolution that eventually produced a democracy.

So when we ask who gets to decide what Taiwan becomes, there are at least three answers competing at once.

Beijing says history and sovereignty give China the right to determine Taiwan’s ultimate future. Taiwan’s democratic system gives its people a voice in determining their own. And the United States has spent decades trying to deter a coercive or unilateral resolution of the dispute while maintaining its deliberately unusual relationship with both sides.

That uncomfortable arrangement has helped preserve the peace.

A blockade could be designed to change it.

If China wants Taiwan, must it invade? Or can it make continued separation too costly to sustain?

To understand that question, we first have to understand how an island acquired so many competing histories.

WHO DECIDED?

Taiwan was not originally Japanese. It was not originally Chinese either.

Indigenous Austronesian peoples lived on the island thousands of years before either modern nation existed. Their ancestors belonged to an ancient Pacific world whose peoples and languages eventually stretched from Taiwan through the Philippines and Polynesia to Hawaii and as far away as Madagascar.

They are not a footnote to Taiwan’s history. They were most of it’s history.

European powers arrived in the seventeenth century. Dutch and Spanish colonial footholds appeared. Migration from the Chinese mainland increased, particularly from Fujian and Guangdong. Qing China incorporated Taiwan into its empire in 1683

Then China lost a war.

In 1895, after defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Qing government ceded Taiwan to Japan.

Notice the verb.

Ceded—which means to surrender or yield control of something one owns. The act of surrender implies to give up all claims.

Taiwan changed hands because one empire defeated another.

Japan ruled the island for the next fifty years. It built railways, ports, schools and infrastructure while imposing colonial rule and pursuing assimilation. Generations of Taiwanese were born under Japanese government.

The people of Taiwan had no say in this transaction. They were traded like property in a game of Monopoly.

Then Japan lost a war.

After Japan surrendered in 1945, Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China took administrative control of Taiwan. Once again, the people living on the island had not given consent to the arrangement.

Then came another war.

Mao Zedong’s Communists defeated Chiang’s Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War.

In 1949, Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic of China on the mainland.

Chiang retreated to Taiwan with his government, military and a large wave of mainland Chinese refugees. The Republic of China had lost China. But it had not disappeared. It relocated.

For decades, both governments claimed to represent China. Mao ruled the mainland from Beijing. Chiang ruled Taiwan from Taipei. Both sides initially insisted there was one China. Each claimed to be its legitimate government.

That is an important correction to the way Americans often imagine the story.

The current conflict did not begin with China versus an independent country called Taiwan. It began, in significant part, as China versus China.

And that helps explain Beijing’s position today.

From Beijing’s perspective, Taiwan is not simply a neighboring country China covets. The Chinese government describes the Taiwan question as an unfinished matter of national reunification and sovereignty arising from the Chinese Civil War.

But history did not stop in 1949.

Taiwan changed. And eventually the people living there acquired something they had rarely possessed during the long history of outsiders deciding their future.

A vote.

THE COUNTRY THAT LOST ITS COUNTRY

Chiang Kai-shek did not bring liberal democracy to Taiwan. His government was authoritarian. Martial law remained in place for decades. Political opposition was suppressed. The trauma of the 1947 crackdown known as The February 28 Incident, followed by the period remembered as The White Terror, became part of Taiwan’s political memory.

The Republic of China continued claiming to represent China.

But the diplomatic world gradually moved toward Beijing. In 1971, the People’s Republic of China took China’s seat at the United Nations. In 1979, Washington transferred diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.

Taiwan found itself in an extraordinary position.

Its formal diplomatic space was shrinking while the society on the island was beginning to transform.

Martial law ended in 1987. Political restrictions loosened. Opposition parties developed. And in 1996 something happened that changed the Taiwan question in a way military maps cannot adequately describe.

Taiwan’s people directly elected their president.

For the first time.

THE MOMENT THE PEOPLE ENTER THE STORY

March 23, 1996, deserves more attention than it usually receives.

Taiwan was preparing for its first direct presidential election. China was conducting military exercises and missile tests near the island. The United States sent two aircraft-carrier battle groups toward the region. The Taiwan Strait became the scene of a dangerous confrontation.

And Taiwanese voters went to the polls.

This matters for reasons larger than the election itself.

Before democracy, the argument over Taiwan could plausibly remain largely an argument between rival Chinese governments. After democratization, another participant became impossible to ignore.

The people who lived there.

That does not magically settle the sovereignty dispute. But it changes its character.

Because now any discussion of Taiwan’s future contains a democratic question: What do the people governed from Taipei want? That question becomes particularly important when we learn who the Taiwanese actually are.

Most have Han Chinese ancestry. Many families trace their roots to migrants who crossed from southeastern China centuries before the Communist revolution. Others descend from mainlanders who arrived around the time of Chiang’s retreat. Indigenous peoples have much older roots on the island. Fifty years of Japanese colonial rule left another cultural and historical layer.

But ancestry and political identity are not identical.

An American whose grandparents came from Ireland does not therefore believe Dublin governs Chicago. A person can inherit a culture without accepting the sovereignty of the place from which that culture came.

Taiwan’s long-running public-opinion research reflects precisely that distinction, separately asking people whether they identify as Taiwanese, Chinese or both, and what political arrangement they prefer across the Taiwan Strait. Ethnic identity and constitutional destiny are different questions.

And that distinction matters enormously when we return to China. Because Beijing’s historical claim is about sovereignty.

Taiwan’s democratic development introduces another claim:

Consent.

Now return to Dr. Kellner’s question.

If China cannot obtain the political outcome it seeks through consent, what other mechanisms remain?

Invasion is one. Blockade is another.

INVASION IS THE OBVIOUS WAR

An invasion is comparatively easy to recognize. Ships assemble. Aircraft and drones attack. Missiles fall. Troops cross the Taiwan Strait.

An amphibious assault against Taiwan would be extraordinarily difficult. China would have to move enormous numbers of people and equipment across water, establish and sustain beachheads, contend with Taiwan’s defenses and face the possibility of intervention by outside powers.

That is the war everyone watches for.

Let’s look at another one.

Blockade.

The underlying principle is ancient: if an adversary depends on what comes through its gates, perhaps there is no need to break the walls.

Bock the gates.

Taiwan’s recent military exercises show that this possibility is no abstraction. Its military and Coast Guard practiced escorting merchant vessels through a simulated blockade and into port. Authorities deliberately slowed mobile internet to simulate wartime disruption. Civil institutions practiced continuing to function under pressure.

Taiwan is not merely practicing how to shoot back.

It is practicing how to continue.

THE ISLAND AND THE LIFELINE

The logic of blockade is ancient because great powers have learned throughout history that control does not always require conquest.

But Taiwan presents a particularly modern version of an ancient vulnerability. It is an island that cannot sustain its modern economy on what the island itself produces.

Energy is the clearest example.

Taiwan imports nearly all of the energy needed to power its economy. Oil and liquefied natural gas arrive by sea. Its great commercial ports are not simply places where consumer goods enter. They are part of the machinery that keeps the lights on, factories operating, hospitals functioning and ordinary life moving.

And geography compounds the problem.

Most of Taiwan’s major ports face the Taiwan Strait, toward China. Kaohsiung and Taichung alone account for roughly 72 percent of the island’s imports. China does not have to seal every mile of Taiwan’s coastline. Pressure concentrated around a handful of ports would immediately affect the entire island.

And the clock would start ticking quickly.

Taiwan has substantial reserves of crude oil, but liquefied natural gas presents a much tighter constraint. Current reserves amount to only about twelve days of consumption. Taiwan is expanding storage capacity, but in a prolonged interruption, energy would become one of the first measures of how long normal life could continue.

This is where a blockade ceases to be a theoretical discussion and impacts every business, hospital, factory and home in the country.

A blockade is not ultimately about ships. It is about electricity. Transportation. Communications. Commerce. Confidence. And time.

That is why there appears to be no obvious or simple rescue operation available. Keeping Taiwan supplied during a serious blockade would mean sending merchant ships—and military escorts—directly into contested waters.

Every successful delivery would sustain Taiwan. Every attempted delivery could also create another opportunity for confrontation. So the problem is no longer whether China has enough ships to surround an island. It is whether China can make commercial access to Taiwan dangerous enough that the world begins isolating Taiwan for it.

And that leads to an even more difficult question.

What if China does not call it a blockade?

WHEN A BLOCKADE IS CALLED SOMETHING ELSE

In October 1962, President John F. Kennedy confronted Soviet nuclear missiles being installed in Cuba. His administration considered military strikes and invasion. Kennedy chose a naval cordon. But he did not call it a blockade.

He called it a quarantine.

The distinction mattered.

“Blockade” implies an act of war. “Quarantine” gave Washington political and legal room to exert pressure while leaving space for diplomacy.

The ships were still there. The confrontation was still real. But language created distance between pressure and declared war.

Imagine a future crisis around Taiwan that does not begin with Beijing announcing:

We are blockading Taiwan.

Instead, Chinese authorities announce enhanced customs inspections. Coast Guard vessels begin stopping selected ships. An area is temporarily closed for military exercises. Certain cargoes require authorization. A commercial vessel is diverted. Another waits. Another shipping company decides not to sail. Insurance premiums rise. The military does not have to stop every ship if commerce begins stopping itself.

And now Washington confronts a problem very different from an invasion.

If Chinese soldiers storm a Taiwanese beach, the event is unmistakable. But what happens when a Chinese Coast Guard vessel stops a tanker? When does inspection become quarantine? When does quarantine become blockade? When does blockade become war?

And who fires the first shot?

Taiwan understands that the boundary between law enforcement and military action could become critically important. Its navy and Coast Guard are practicing together precisely because the opening moves of a confrontation may not look like conventional war.

That is preparation not merely for attack.

It is preparation for ambiguity.

THE PEOPLE INSIDE THE BLOCKADE

Military discussions have a habit of making Taiwan disappear.

There is China. There is the United States. There are aircraft carriers, missiles, submarines, shipping lanes and semiconductor factories.

Somewhere underneath all of that are 23 million people. They have homes. Children. Hospitals. Schools. Elections. Political arguments. Dinner reservations.

Ordinary life is important because ordinary life would be one of the principal targets of a blockade. A blockade attacks more than supply. It attacks confidence.

How long before fuel shortages change behavior? How long before businesses begin hoarding inventory? How long before interrupted communications create rumors? How long before financial markets respond? How long before parents with the means to leave begin considering it? How long before the political argument changes from Can we resist? to What is resistance costing us?

This is why Taiwan’s decision to throttle mobile internet during its military exercises is so revealing. It was rehearsing what happens when the smartphone in someone’s hand stops behaving normally.

Taiwan has also been testing emergency medical facilities, food distribution, communications and civilian resilience. The objective is continuity. Can the hospital work? Can the government communicate? Can food move? Can reliable information reach people? Can society remain society?

A blockade ultimately succeeds not simply when ships are stopped. It succeeds when the people inside conclude that the price of continuing has become unacceptable.

And that brings Taiwan uncomfortably close to another country whose people discovered what happens when geopolitical argument becomes physical reality.

UKRAINE - THE LESSON TAIWAN DOES NOT WANT TO LIVE

Taiwan is not Ukraine. The comparison becomes lazy very quickly.

Ukraine is an internationally recognized sovereign state invaded across land borders by an aggressor. Taiwan’s diplomatic and legal circumstances are different. Taiwan is an island. Its history is different. Its military problem is different.

But Ukraine has provided Taiwan with one unavoidable lesson.

Deterrence matters most before the first missile lands.

Ukraine has demonstrated courage, resilience, improvisation, the military value of drones and distributed systems, and the importance of outside support.

It has also demonstrated the terrible inadequacy of discussing war only in terms of who eventually wins. Cities can be destroyed while a country successfully resists. Families can be displaced. Infrastructure can disappear. A nation can survive and still pay an extraordinary price for survival.

Taiwan therefore does not simply need the ability to fight China. Its preferred strategic outcome is that China never decides fighting is worthwhile. That helps explain the exercises. Taiwan is preparing for war because preparation is part of its attempt to prevent one.

But a blockade complicates deterrence because pressure can be exerted gradually.

No single moment has to look like the beginning of war.

INVASION OR BLOCKADE?

China says it seeks peaceful reunification while reserving the use of force. Taiwan continues strengthening military and civilian resilience. The United States maintains its deliberately unusual relationship with Taiwan: no formal diplomatic recognition of Taipei, substantial unofficial ties, support for Taiwan’s defensive capacity and a stated interest in a peaceful resolution of cross-Strait differences.

All three live inside an arrangement built partly from ambiguity. For decades, ambiguity has helped preserve peace. But ambiguity can also be exploited.

An invasion forces decisions quickly. A blockade can force them slowly.

An invasion tells Taiwan exactly what has happened. A blockade can leave governments arguing about terminology while pressure accumulates.

An invasion requires China to seize the island. A blockade asks whether China can make the island’s existing position increasingly difficult to maintain.

And that returns us to Dr. Kellner’s question underneath the military question.

Who gets to decide?

THE ISLAND THAT LEARNED TO CHOOSE

For much of Taiwan’s modern history, someone else answered that question. The Qing court. The Japanese empire. The victors of World War II. Chiang Kai-shek. Mao Zedong. Washington and Beijing.

Taiwan has been ceded, administered, claimed, defended, threatened and recognized—or not recognized—according to decisions made by governments more powerful than the people living there.

Then Taiwan changed. Its people became voters.

That fact does not erase Chinese history or make Beijing’s claims disappear. The Chinese do not care what the people of Taiwan want. It does not settle the difficult questions surrounding sovereignty or international recognition.

But it changes the human stakes.

The Taiwan of 2026 is not merely territory left over from a civil war. It is a society whose people have spent decades developing institutions through which they participate in choosing who governs them. That is what sits inside the blockade.

And that is why the distinction between invasion and blockade matters more than it first appears.

An invasion tries to seize Taiwan by force. A blockade attempts something subtler: to change the choices available to Taiwan until the outcome Beijing wants becomes easier than the alternatives.

The weapons could be ships and missiles. But they could also be insurance premiums. Fuel. Internet access. Commercial confidence. Time. Fear. Exhaustion.

Kellner asks us to stop watching for an invasion fleet and direct our attention outward, toward the ships that could form a ring around Taiwan. But eventually our attention has to turn back inside that ring.

To the people.

For centuries larger powers decided what Taiwan would become. The next confrontation will be whether they get to do it again.

China does not have to invade Taiwan to threaten the life the Taiwanese people have built. A blockade can close ports, interrupt energy and communications, frighten away commerce and steadily reduce the choices available to the people inside the ring.

An invasion takes the island. A blockade takes away its choices.

Twenty-three million people live on Taiwan. They have built a government, an economy and a democracy. They elect their leaders. They have spent generations becoming something their Chinese and Japanese overlords never planned:

Taiwanese.

China claims Taiwan. Taiwan governs itself.  The United States has spent decades trying to keep that contradiction from becoming a war. A blockade would force the contradiction into the open.

The question is no longer who claims Taiwan.

It is whether the people who live there will be able to continue to choose their own future or whether someone else will choose it for them.