Is China about to invade Taiwan?

China is "more ready than ever to surround the self-ruled island of Taiwan, cut it off from the world and try to squeeze it into submission", said The Wall Street Journal.

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.

A Chinese blockade of Taiwan would be an "act of war that sparks a global crisis", said the WSJ. "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."

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What is the latest?

Earlier this month, Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te spoke out against what he warned was expanding Chinese subversion and spying. He called the mainland a "foreign hostile force" exploiting the island's freedoms to "divide, destroy, and subvert us from within".

The backlash from Beijing was "swift", said The New York Times. China "hit back, sending a surge of military planes and ships near the island and warning that he was 'playing with fire'".

Invading Taiwan by sea has, until now, been considered too difficult and costly for China. The Taiwan Strait is more than 90 nautical miles wide and "incredibly choppy", said the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) think tank. Two annual monsoon seasons and other extreme weather mean a naval invasion would be limited to a handful of narrow timeframes.

Transporting hundreds of thousands of troops would require "thousands" of ships and each crossing would take several hours, giving Taiwan the time to defend itself. In January, Naval News first reported the construction of new barges with a road bridge extending from the bow at Guangzhou Shipyard, in southern China. Photographic evidence has now emerged showing these new "amphibious bridging designs with ominous significance for a notional PLA-invasion of Taiwan", said the news site this month regarding the threat from China's People’s Liberation Army.

Sighting of the barge-like Shuqiao ships "provides insight into China's integration of its military, paramilitary and civilian operations – and its plans for a potential invasion", said The Guardian.

Chinese forces could use the bridge 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.

When could an invasion happen?

Beijing's new barges have only one conceivable purpose, said David Axe in The Telegraph, "to carry People's Liberation Army vehicles over Taiwanese beaches as part of a full-scale invasion of Taiwan". Indeed, he added, the vessels are "the latest warning sign" that an attack "is probably imminent".

Experts "disagree about the likelihood and timing of a Chinese invasion", said the CFR. In March 2024, the top US military commander in the Indo-Pacific said that Beijing is maintaining its goal of being able to invade Taiwan by 2027. That year 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".

China could move sooner as it looks to "exploit a fragmented West while it waits for the 'perfect moment' to launch an attack on Taiwan," said The Sun.

"I think China is preparing itself for this big, big, uncertain period where opportunities are opening up", said Professor Kerry Brown from King's College London.

Beijing 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.

"This will help the country to delay a collective security and economic response from the West," said The Sun.

How could an invasion start?

Chinese military drills last May and October surrounded Taiwan's main island with joint exercises by all branches of the PLA and "for the first time, the increasingly militarised Coast Guard", said The Guardian.

The likely strategy is to overwhelm Taiwan with a massive attack with little warning, Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, told The Washington Post last June.

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". Under 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.

How would it play out?

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. 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 Trump has pledged not to get involved in foreign wars.

That all 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".