Is China going to invade Taiwan?

China has said its latest large-scale military drills around Taiwan are intended as a "stern warning" to those seeking independence on the island.

Beijing ordered a record number of fighter jets and other warplanes around Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday, after new President Lai Ching-te gave a speech vowing to protect the island's sovereignty in the face of challenges from the mainland.

Taiwan split from the People's Republic of China during a civil war in the 1940s, but Beijing has always viewed the island as a rogue breakaway territory to be brought back under control, by force if necessary, making it arguably "the most dangerous place on Earth", said The Economist.

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'Grey zone'

China's latest exercises involving fighter jets, drones, warships and Coast Guard vessels simulated military assaults and a blockade of the self-governing island and are just the latest in a "series of recent war games" conducted by Beijing against its neighbour, said CNN.

Over the past two years, China has ramped up its so-called "grey zone operations", which represented "activities that fall short of war" in the Taiwan Strait, said The Independent.

So while Monday's drills were "widely expected," said the BBC, the "deployment and how close Chinese ships and aircraft were to Taiwan – as well as the fiery rhetoric – could be seen as very aggressive behaviour".

"In any other context, it would have been seen as a dramatic escalation – but it came against the backdrop of tensions that were already very high."

Risk of 'accidental confrontation'

For decades the governments in Beijing and Taipei had an unwritten agreement not to cross an unofficial median line that divides the 110-mile-wide strait between them. Now "China is crossing it almost daily, at sea and in the air", said Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, the BBC's Asia correspondent based in Taipei, last year. Beijing's "persistent incursions" have provided a "powder keg", said CNN's Will Ripley.

China's "now-normalised presence around Taiwan raises the risk of an accidental confrontation", said defence analyst Ben Lewis in The New York Times in February. "But over the longer term, it has also gradually created a dangerous sense of complacency in Taipei and Washington, while giving China the crucial operational practice it might one day need to seize the island."

As well as the deterioration in cross-strait relations, there is a fear that China's "growing military modernization and assertiveness" could spark a conflict, said the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

When could an invasion happen?

Experts "disagree about the likelihood and timing of a Chinese invasion", said the think tank. Earlier this year, the top US military commander in the Indo-Pacific said that Beijing is maintaining its goal of being able to invade Taiwan by 2027.

2027 is seen as "magical" because it marks the centenary of what was to become the People's Liberation Army (PLA), said Robert Fox in London's The Standard.

"Others believe 2049 is a critical date," said the CFR, as China's President Xi Jinping has "emphasised that unification with Taiwan is essential to achieving what he calls the Chinese Dream, which sees China's great-power status restored by 2049".

How could an invasion start?

China's likely strategy is to overwhelm Taiwan with a massive attack with little warning, Admiral Samuel Paparo, the new head of US Indo-Pacific Command told The Washington Post in June. "Xi doesn't want to repeat Russian President Vladimir Putin's mistake in Ukraine in 2022, when Russia's initial full-scale invasion failed and devolved into a long war of attrition."

That would mean in the early hours of a Chinese invasion, the narrow strait separating the island from the mainland would likely be "transformed into a ferocious battlefield", said Business Insider. Aside from deploying more traditional weapons such as missiles or warships, "vast fleets of unmanned aerial and naval drones will likely darken the skies and hide beneath waves, bringing with them a deadly threat that Taiwan and its allies are ill-prepared to counter". The US strategy to counter this – dubbed "Hellscape" – hinges on deploying thousands of new drones that would swarm the Taiwan Strait and keep China's military busy until more help can arrive.

Taiwan is also expected to have access to low earth orbit satellite internet service within weeks, a "crucial" step, The Guardian said, "in case a Chinese attack cripples the island's communications".

Further consequences

If a conflict were to break out it would be "a catastrophe", said the Economist. This is first because of "the bloodshed in Taiwan", but also because of the risk of "escalation between two nuclear powers", namely the US and China.

Beijing massively outguns Taiwan, with estimates from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute showing that China spent about 23 times more on its military in 2021. But Taiwan has a defence pact with the US dating back to the 1954 Sino-American Mutual Defence Treaty, meaning the US could be drawn into the conflict.

It means any invasion "would be one of the most dangerous and consequential events of the 21st century", said The Times, and "would make the Russian attack on Ukraine look like a sideshow by comparison".

Such an event "could quickly have ramifications far beyond the island, drawing in Japan, South Korea, and the United States and other countries of Nato", too.