China deployed dozens of warships and planes to encircle the island nation of Taiwan in menacing, large-scale war games earlier this week.

Chilling satellite pictures also revealed what appear to be Beijing’s ‘invasion barges’ – gargantuan platforms that connect to form a mobile pier that could enable thousands of soldiers and hundreds of vehicles to land on Taiwan’s shores. 

The multi-day military drills forced Taipei to respond by scrambling fighter jets and warships of their own to dissuade any overzealous members of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) from posing a serious threat.

But these alarming exercises were just the latest addition to a worrying trend that has seen Beijing grow increasingly aggressive toward its island neighbour in recent years.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), headed by authoritarian President Xi Jinping, sees Taiwan as a renegade province to be brought back under Beijing’s control, by force if necessary.

But Taiwan’s elected Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presides over a self-governing, democratic society and has sought close ties with the US, hoping its political, military and economic heft will keep Xi’s expansionist tendencies at bay.

American deterrence, the reliance of China’s export economy on the West and the cost of a military operation to seize Taiwan has led most analysts to suggest Beijing is more likely to use less direct means to pressure Taipei.

But politicians, military chiefs and industry leaders the world over can no longer afford to ignore the prospect of a full-scale invasion – a scenario which would shake the foundations of the world as we know it and could well trigger a Third World War. 

Now, as Donald Trump pushes Taiwan to pay more for its defence while slapping it with significant trade tariffs, concern is growing that the US President may begin treating Taipei – as one analyst put it – ‘as a pawn to trade with China to achieve his interests’.

With the help of international security, development and Indo-Pacific experts, we examine what would happen if China were to pull off a successful storming of Taiwan and wrest back control of its island neighbour.

Chinese troops from the People’s Liberation Army are seen patrolling with the Chinese flag on an exercise

This satellite image taken on March 25, 2025 and received on April 3, 2025 by Planet Labs PBC shows three Chinese barges connected via extendable bridges in waters off Zhanjiang city, in southern China’s Guangdong province

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), headed by authoritarian president Xi Jinping , sees Taiwan as a renegade province to be brought back under Beijing ‘s control, by force if necessary

Taiwanese soldiers pose for group photos with a Taiwan flag after a preparedness enhancement drill in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan

Taiwan is a small island adrift in the South China Sea roughly 100 kilometres off China’s southeastern shores, positioned at the crossroads of East Asia.

Measuring just 36,000 square kilometres, Taiwan is roughly 1/25th the size of mainland China, or about half the size of Scotland – but it is a territory of immense strategic and economic importance.

The island is a manufacturing and technological powerhouse that occupies a critical part of the global supply chain, while the Taiwan Strait – a narrow waterway separating it from mainland China – is a key trade route facilitating the movement of goods, electronics and oil throughout Asia and beyond.

Taiwan is also an integral member of the ‘first island chain’, a ring of territories running from Japan to the Philippines, each of which is to some degree allied with the US to form a natural barrier against Chinese military expansion into the Pacific.

For all these reasons and more, a successful invasion of Taiwan by China would herald the advent of a new world order, according to Professor Kerry Jones, Director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London (KCL) and former First Secretary at the British Embassy in Beijing. 

China expands its control of Indo-Pacific

This world order would see China ‘move from a challenger and competitor into an aggressor and an enemy of the political West’, Jones said.

In sheer military terms, seizing Taiwan – or the Republic of China (ROC) – would afford the People’s Republic of China (PRC) a strengthened platform from which it could further project air and naval power. 

This in turn would allow Beijing to strictly police key transport and trade routes, thereby cultivating great influence over the economy of its neighbours and rivals, having shattered the first island chain. 

Dr Philip Shetler-Jones, Senior Research Fellow in Indo‑Pacific Security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think-tank, said: ‘If the PRC controls Taiwan, it gains an advantage in controlling air, surface and sub-surface areas astride the main shipping and air routes connecting Japan and South Korea to their sources of critical imports -especially energy – and markets. 

‘It would be enabled to challenge the US Navy more effectively across the Pacific, because it could move submarines out past the first island chain with more security.’

Sean Kenji Starrs, Lecturer in International Development at KCL, added that such a scenario ‘would probably mean the end of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait’ altogether.

‘These waterways account for the bulk of the world’s electronics trade and much else, including to Western Europe and the United States. It would also make it much more difficult for the US to blockade the Straight of Malacca,’ he said. 

This strait, a stretch of water between Malaysia and Singapore, connects the Indian and Pacific Oceans and constitutes the shortest shipping route between East Asia and the Middle East on which China’s export economy is heavily dependent. 

Beijing is acutely aware of this vulnerability, fearing that a US blockade of the strait could deal a punishing blow to its economy. 

As Starrs points out, taking Taiwan would mean Beijing would reduce the likelihood of this weak point being exploited. 

‘All of this would basically mean that China could become a peer competitor to the United States in East Asia, thus the end of US hegemony in East Asia,’ he concluded.

Military equipment takes part in long-range live-fire drills in waters of the East China Sea, in this screenshot from a handout video released by the Eastern Theatre Command of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on April 2, 2025

This handout photo from Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence shows Taiwanese soldiers operating tanks

Containers are seen at the Port of Keelung on April 04, 2025 in Keelung, Taiwan

US reputation is destroyed, influence in Indo-Pacific eroded

A successful Chinese invasion and annexation of Taiwan presupposes one of two seismic events – a total defeat of the US military in the Indo-Pacific theatre, or Washington abruptly abandoning a decades-long security partnership with Taipei. 

Both scenarios would be catastrophic for America, and by extension, Western interests in the highly strategic region.

Washington’s influence in the region would evaporate as Asian nations who have long sought to build strong strategic ties with America, both military and economic, would be forced into a drastic rethink of their allegiances.

Meanwhile, various Western-aligned transcontinental security alliances such as the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, US), AUKUS (Australia, UK, US)- not to mention NATO – would be left reeling from their disastrous failure to safeguard Taipei.

Starrs explained how an American defeat, or refusal to uphold its security commitments to Taiwan in the face of a Chinese attack, would dispel any notion that the US remains the world’s dominant political and military power. 

‘National populations in Japan and South Korea, let alone Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere would likely shift their opinion in favour of China due to the massive shift in power this would entail – otherwise they would risk being the next victim of Chinese attack. 

‘Political and economic elites of US allies would still want to integrate with the US, but they would be under pressure to have better relations with China,’ he said.  

‘If the US lost and China successfully occupied Taiwan, then this would entail the military defeat of Japan and South Korea, and probably Australia and NATO as well.’

Starrs went on to posit that China could even seek to seize more territory if it were to take Taiwan without significant losses.

‘Chinese military presence in Taiwan would significantly diminish Japanese and South Korean security and increase vulnerability to further attack. Certainly, China would go for the Japanese-controlled Senkaku/Daiyou Islands and perhaps more.’ 

North Korea emboldened

Just as a successful invasion of Taiwan would entail a collapse of the US military deterrent and a weakening of the West’s allies in the region, it would only serve to embolden China’s allies.

None more so than North Korea, whose dynastic, dictatorial leader Kim Jong Un maintains his grip on power by keeping his citizens perpetually fearful and hateful of the US and its allies – particularly South Korea, which Kim has called his nation’s ‘principal enemy’.

Pyongyang has in recent months cut itself off completely from the South, detonating the few roads and railways that kept the two connected while mining the frontier along the demilitarised zone.

Kim also continues to pour resources into military modernisation and arms manufacturing, up to and including his burgeoning nuclear arsenal.

Shetler-Jones was sceptical that Kim would seek to invade or strike South Korea, arguing that the endurance of his regime is contingent on keeping his subjugated population in a constant state of fear and anticipation of an existential clash, rather than actively pursuing a conflict.

But Starrs said North Korea could potentially play a key role in a Chinese ploy to seize Taiwan and would be compelled to act if such a conflict were to break out.

‘I think the more likely scenario would be China encouraging or pressuring North Korea to invade South Korea in order to expel US troops… to open a new front against the US so that China could more easily take Taiwan,’ he said.

Markus Garlauskas, a former US National Intelligence Officer for North Korea, has also argued that a conflict over Taiwan would ‘almost certainly become a region-wide war’ that engulfs the Korean Peninsula, with Pyongyang expected to seize the opportunity to ‘settle scores with Seoul’ and ‘exploit the vulnerabilities of a distracted United States’.

Taiwan Air Force personnel conduct pre-flight inspection on Mirage 2000 fighter jets inside Hsinchu Airbase, in Hsinchu, Taiwan, 01 April 2025

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un aims a weapon as he visits the training base of the special operations armed force of North Korea’s army at an undisclosed location in North Korea

 North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, his daughter and an official watch what it says is an intercontinental ballistic missile launching from an undisclosed location in North Korea

Fate of the Taiwanese People

Despite China’s insistence that Taiwan is nothing more than a renegade province, opinion polls have consistently shown that the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese people feel they have a distinct identity.

Surveys conducted by the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation in December 2024 and January 2025 showed 76.1% of adults aged 20 and above said they see themselves as Taiwanese.

Just 10.1% of respondents said they felt they had a Chinese identity, and 9% felt both Taiwanese and Chinese. 

More than half (51.8%) want to see Taiwan secure full independence from China as an internationally recognised state, and another quarter (24.2%) want to maintain the status quo, in which Taiwan maintains its complete autonomy from China as a self-governing nation. 

By contrast, just 13.3% of people said they’d like Taiwan to reunite with the mainland. 

If China were to mount a successful invasion, we can say with relative certainty what would happen to the island’s flourishing democratic society.

One only has to look at what transpired in Hong Kong after China passed its sweeping National Security Law in 2020 in response to widespread pro-democracy protests the year before. 

Starrs said Taiwan would face a similar crackdown on personal freedoms, social and political thought and mobility – but to a far harsher degree, given that China would have had to seize the island by force.

‘If China were to successfully annex Taiwan, they would have to shut down democracy as they did in Hong Kong after the passage of the National Security Law in June 2020. 

‘They would have to ban free and fair elections, shut down or nationalise the media, reform the education system, increase control of the Internet, and – unlike in Hong Kong – would have to have a massive military presence to contain any potential insurgencies, mutinies or even just popular street protests.

‘They probably would also have to significantly tighten immigration and emigration controls to try and prevent a brain drain, since many upper income and highly educated Taiwanese have a Green card, US or other citizenship.’

Shetler-Jones added: ‘Given the long period over which Taiwanese have enjoyed de facto independence, it is likely that resistance to authoritarian governance would be stiffer and the crackdown would be more severe.’

Taiwan’s elected Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), led by Lai Ching-te (centre), steadfastly argues it presides over a self-governing, democratic, capitalist society with overwhelming support from its people 

Air Defense and Missile Command of Taiwan Air Force takes part in a military exercise, at an undisclosed location in Taiwan in this handout picture provided by Taiwan Defence Ministry and released on April 9, 2023

How could China take Taiwan? 

Recent years have seen Beijing scale up the frequency and intensity of its war games around the island – as evidenced earlier this week.

Meanwhile, the PLA has warned that ‘the theatre’s troops are ready to fight at all times and can fight at any time to resolutely smash any form of ‘Taiwan independence’ and foreign interference attempts.’ 

Taiwan’s alliance with the US has afforded it a bristling military arsenal equipped with state-of-the-art American air and sea defence systems, manned by highly trained troops.

But in a straight fight between the might of China’s PLA and Taiwan’s armed forces, Goliath would inevitably triumph over David – albeit at great sacrifice. 

There are two scenarios that defence analysts tend to settle on when thinking about China’s military options against Taiwan. 

The first is a naval blockade – a tactic which would represent an enormous challenge for an island nation that is reliant upon its ports for survival, given it can only produce roughly a third of its food domestically. 

Taiwan is within easy reach of the PLA Air Force, and China’s navy would be capable of encircling the island as demonstrated by various war games and simulated blockades. 

Beijing’s warships operate a large quantity of anti-ship cruise missiles that would pose a major threat to Taiwan’s naval forces. China can also equip its fighter planes with various weapons designed to take out naval vessels, while the country’s land-based rocket forces wield the mighty DF-26B – which has a range of up to 2,500 miles.

The Chinese navy would likely launch dozens of missiles in salvos designed to arrive at the target location simultaneously while preventing any military or humanitarian aid from reaching Taiwan by sea.

This tactic would enable Xi’s armed forces to deny Taiwan the vital food and minerals that the island relies upon, while simultaneously presenting a defensive nightmare for Taipei and any of its partners trying to break the blockade. The goal would be to coerce Taiwan into accepting China’s will.

The second scenario is the one which sees China’s vast army embark on an amphibious invasion of Taiwan in a similar fashion to the D-Day landings. 

This scenario, which might happen as an extension of the naval blockade, would include an extensive preparatory period that Beijing would be unable to hide. An invasion would require – at a conservative estimate – between half a million, and a million personnel, as well as the transport ships to get them to Taiwan.

At some point, the airspace over the Taiwan Strait would be closed and China’s army, air force, and navy would begin a massed air and missile attack. 

Cruise and ballistic missiles would be directed at Taiwan’s air defences, logistics hubs, airfields, and government buildings in the hope of decapitating its ability to maintain and coordinate resistance. Once the PLA’s leadership was satisfied that Taiwan’s defences had been sufficiently softened, it would begin the invasion in earnest. 

The first wave may well include helicopter-borne special forces as well as the PLA Airborne Forces, which have their own armoured vehicles (APCs) designed to be parachuted into combat, and would likely consist of soldiers from the Chinese army’s Eastern Theatre Command as well as the Marine Corps.

The APCs would be packed onto amphibious assault ships, and those that survive Taiwan’s fierce defences would disembark their APCs to steam onto the target beach. 

An animation provided by Chinese military officials to The Global Times showed a simulated attack on Taiwan

In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, a missile from the rocket force of the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) takes part in operations during the combat readiness patrol and military exercises around the Taiwan Island on Friday, April 7, 2023

Ships of Taiwan Navy take part in a military exercise in Taiwan in this handout picture released on April 10, 2023

This satellite image taken on March 25, 2025 and received on April 3, 2025 by Planet Labs PBC shows three Chinese barges connected via extendable bridges in waters off Zhanjiang city

Once on the beach they would face fierce resistance from Taiwan’s armed forces in prepared defences, but China has a huge advantage in terms of the number of bodies it can commit to the fight. 

Now, China’s ‘invasion barges’ make the prospect of an amphibious landing yet more alarming. 

‘These barges may enable Chinese forces to make landings even on the more challenging terrains of the Taiwanese coastline,’ said Wen-Ti Sung, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.

This, he added, ‘gives the Chinese military a greater selection of potential landing spots, and spreads Taiwanese defences thin’.

Satellite images from Planet Labs PBC obtained by AFP showed the system deployed in the waters off Zhanjiang city of Guangdong, southern China, at the end of March.

In a programme on state TV last month discussing the barges, military commentator Wei Dongxu touted their ability to transport large numbers of heavy equipment onto an island ‘while keeping their feet dry’.

‘Once the naval and air forces effectively control the air and sea, then this… barge will appear,’ he said.

‘It can be said that it is a sign of victory.’

Experts hope Taiwan will never see such violence. Starrs and Shetler-Jones both said the likelihood of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan remains very low.

Although they admitted that Beijing could pursue less drastic measures, such as a naval blockade of Taiwan, cyber attacks, economic sanctions and a ramping up of other diplomatic and political pressures, they felt that a full-scale attack would prove too costly for China’s economy and trigger all-out war with America. 

‘(China taking Taiwan) would be so disastrous for the US that they would not allow it, they would bring the full spectrum of US power to prevent success, up to and including use of nuclear weapons,’ Starrs said.

But Professor Brown stressed that Beijing’s ongoing war games and increasingly antagonistic rhetoric over Taiwan increases the likelihood that one or a series of errors could quickly spiral, with cataclysmic consequences.

‘These (blockades and military drills) are happening so regularly – it shows that China wishes to maintain psychological pressure on Taiwan and to continue to remind the international community of its claims and its resolve to see them ultimately fulfilled.

‘The issue with these actions is that they create plenty of opportunity for miscalculation, misunderstanding and mistake.

‘Nationalist sentiment in China is high at the moment, but the costs currently of moving against Taiwan are very, very high. Unless provoked, I cannot imagine that China would do this. 

‘But we are living in very worrying and uncertain times. Alas, this issue is now more dangerous than it has ever been before.’