What would happen if China invaded Taiwan?
US intelligence downplays likelihood of attack in 2027 but actions in Middle East could make Xi Jinping ‘more likely to strike later this decade or early next’
With war raging in Ukraine and the Middle East there was a “faintly reassuring line” in the latest Annual Threat Assessment by America’s intelligence agencies regarding another potential global flashpoint, said The Economist.
“Chinese leaders do not currently plan to execute an invasion of Taiwan in 2027,” the report said, despite repeated warnings from US officials that Beijing was planning on using the centenary of what would become the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to launch a takeover of the breakaway island next year.
Despite concerns that an “over-politicised American intelligence community might have an incentive to downplay the threat”, said The Economist, there is growing consensus that a full-scale attack on Taiwan within the next 18 months is unlikely. There are, though, “growing fears that the war in the Middle East – and its consequences for American politics and military power” might make Chinese President Xi Jinping “more likely to strike Taiwan later this decade or early next”.
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How likely is an invasion?
Despite a ramping-up of tensions between Taiwan and the mainland over the past year, experts “disagree about the likelihood and timing of a Chinese invasion”, said the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) think tank.
China has been engaging in “unprecedented aggression and military modernisation”, Admiral Samuel Paparo, the commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, told the US Congressional Armed Services Committee last year. Underscoring the seriousness of this escalation, he said China’s drills around Taiwan are “not just exercises – they are rehearsals”.
At the end of December, Beijing held massive war games that entirely encircled the island and included combat-readiness and port-blockade drills, as well as live fire and simulated land and sea strikes. China called the drills a “stern warning” against separatist and “external interference” forces, after the Trump administration announced a $11.1 billion (£8.1 billion) arms package to Taipei.
While “alarming”, said the Atlantic Council earlier in 2025, this “unfortunately reflects a broader, consistent trend” of escalating activities by the PLA, including persistent crossings of the Taiwan Strait’s median line.
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Data from Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense found that sorties across the Taiwanese-declared dividing line between Taiwan and China have increased from 953 incidents in 2021 to 3,070 in 2024, said the Jamestown think tank, and the rising trend has continued over the past year.
At the same time, China has been stockpiling record amounts of gold, which could be part of a strategy to defend itself from Western sanctions in the event of an attack on Taiwan. It has also been building a solid legal ground for a potential invasion, aiming to frame the attack as a legitimate internal matter.
When could an invasion happen?
2027 has long been seen as “magical” and a symbolic date to try and retake the island because it marks the centenary of what was to become the PLA, said Robert Fox in The Standard.
But US intelligence now says an imminent attack is “unlikely”, reported CNN. “Beijing almost certainly will consider a variety of factors in deciding whether and how to pursue military approaches to unification, including PLA readiness, the actions and politics of Taiwan, and whether or not the US will militarily intervene on Taiwan’s behalf,” the annual threat assessment report said last month.
This does not mean that Taiwan’s leadership is taking a passive approach to defence. President Lai Ching-te and his government have adopted a mantra: “by preparing for war, we are avoiding war”. They have initiated “major military reforms”, expanded the mandatory conscription programme, “increased pay and benefits for the military, and introduced more rigorous training”, said the BBC.
They also recently announced a $40 billion (£29.6 billion) security package to strengthen the island’s defences. This includes the development of a “T-dome” air defence system, modelled on Israel’s Iron Dome, “accompanied by a focus on the use of artificial intelligence, drones and other high-tech defence methodologies to boost Taiwan’s ‘asymmetric’ response to a Chinese attack”, said The Times. It is part of a “long-term plan” to raise defence spending to 5% of GDP by 2030, a “response to demands from the Trump administration not to rely solely on the United States coming to its aid”, said the paper.
“Others believe 2049 is a critical date,” said the CFR, as 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?
There are three possible avenues that could lead to conflict, said Joel Wuthnow in Foreign Affairs. A “so-called war of choice” would see Beijing “try to capture Taiwan by force after careful consideration of the economic, military and political risks”. Alternatively, a “war of necessity” might be launched if it felt Taiwan “had crossed a political red line that permanently threatened China’s control of the island”; for example, with a formal declaration of independence. The third possibility, that “has received much less attention – yet may be even more likely” – is a war resulting “from an accident or miscalculation that spirals out of control”.
Given recent events it is easy to see how such a miscalculation could spiral into full-blown conflict.
Chinese military drills have surrounded Taiwan’s main island with joint exercises by all branches of the PLA and, unusually, an increasingly militarised coastguard. Early last year, Naval News first reported the construction of new amphibious barges at Guangzhou Shipyard, in southern China.
These new barge-like Shuiqiao ships are potentially a game-changer for Beijing and provide “insight into China’s integration of its military, paramilitary and civilian operations – and its plans for a potential invasion”, said The Guardian.
The barges feature bridges that could be used to transport tanks and supplies over previously uncrossable land, said The Telegraph, giving them multiple fronts for an invasion and “thinning out” Taiwan’s line of defence.
The likely strategy is to overwhelm Taiwan with a “massive attack with little warning”, said The Washington Post.
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”. During Joe Biden’s presidency, the US strategy to counter this – dubbed “Hellscape” – hinged on deploying thousands of new drones that would swarm the Taiwan Strait and keep China’s military busy until more help could arrive.
The final option open to China would be surgical strikes against Taiwan’s leadership, using the template pioneered by the US in Venezuela and Iran. For China, the US-Israeli-led campaign against Tehran “may prove a valuable lesson in how to disrupt continuity of government and the military chain-of-command during an invasion of Taiwan”, said The Interpreter. “But it may yet become a cautionary tale of what can go wrong after a successful decapitation strike.”
How would it play out?
Chinese action against Taiwan would be an “act of war that sparks a global crisis”, said The Wall Street Journal. “It would provoke a military response by Taiwan, force President Trump to decide whether the US military should help defend the island, disrupt global trade and impel European nations to impose punishing sanctions on Beijing.”
China has warned it will “crush” any foreign attempts to interfere on behalf of Taiwan, after Japan announced plans to deploy missiles near the independent island. Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, has said her country would regard an attack on Taiwan as an “existential threat” to security in the region and would likely intervene.
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 19 times more on its military in 2024. The PLA also boasts more than two million active soldiers. The US is bound by the Taiwan Relations Act to “provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character” and discourage China from using force or coercion to achieve its goals regarding the island. This could see Washington drawn into any conflict – although there is growing scepticism in Taipei that Trump would intervene militarily in the event of a full-blown Chinese attack.
That 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”.