China's strategy for conquering Taiwan without firing a shot

Asia Times

26-05-2025

China is refining a strategy to conquer Taiwan by weaponizing its critical infrastructure and transforming power plants, ports and data hubs into pressure points for systemic collapse, according to a Chinese military journal.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports that China could paralyze Taiwan without firing a shot by targeting key infrastructure—an approach likened to the 'butterfly effect' in the Naval and Merchant Ships journal.
The article identifies 30 to 40 'super critical' nodes—power, water, communications, and liquified natural gas (LNG) facilities – that, if taken offline, could crash Taiwan's systems from within.
It cites the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) recent Strait Thunder 2025A drill, which simulated an attack on Taiwan's largest LNG depot, highlighting China's growing tactical fixation on energy vulnerabilities.
It claims that a well-timed strike, especially during peak conditions such as typhoons or electoral events, could rapidly destabilize Taiwan, eroding resistance and forcing capitulation under minimal military cost.
Proposed methods include precision strikes, cyberattacks, electromagnetic pulses and engineered 'pseudo-natural disasters.' While the article may not reflect official doctrine, its scenarios mirror PLA drills and echo rising rhetoric around 'forced reunification.'
Taiwan's dependence on imported energy leaves it strategically exposed. The US, its chief security partner, opposes unilateral moves to change the status quo and continues arms sales to shore up Taiwan's defenses.
As cross-strait tensions rise, China's evolving doctrine signals a broader shift toward asymmetric warfare, victory through pressure, not open battle.
An August 2024 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report by Bonny Lin and other authors underscores Taiwan's fragility: 97% of its energy and 70% of its food are imported.
Taiwan's stockpiles, they note, are limited: less than two months' worth of coal and gas, and just six months of crude oil and food. According to them, these stockpiles would be subject to Chinese bombardment in an invasion, reducing Taiwan's capability to resist.
Chieh Chung, in an April 2025 Taiwan Times article, argues that destroying Taiwan's LNG terminals would cripple its energy grid, reducing the repair burden on Chinese occupation forces.
While Taiwan has built air raid shelters, Chung notes it still lacks hardened logistics hubs to safeguard water, food and energy in wartime.
Striking Taiwan's energy grid could pave the way for a broader Chinese 'decapitation strike' targeting sites like the Presidential Office, meant to neutralize leadership, paralyze defenses, demoralize civilians and seize the island before the US can respond.
However, China's ability to execute such a strike is far from assured. In an October 2022 RAND report, Sale Lilly observes that PLA thinkers focus on quick, decisive wars, unlike the drawn-out battles in Fallujah, Aleppo, Bakhmut or Gaza.
He adds that US decapitation strikes, like those in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, had little impact on the protracted, grinding conflict that followed.
Should an invasion of Taiwan turn into an occupation, Andrew Faulhaber mentions in an April 2025 article for the Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs that a Taiwanese insurgency could attrit and prolong a Chinese occupation by exploiting geographic advantages, disrupting PLA logistics and mobilizing civilian resistance.
Faulhaber says Taiwan must trade space for time, luring the PLA deep into hostile terrain and using asymmetric tactics like guerrilla warfare, cyber strikes and maritime interdiction to destabilize the occupation.
By eroding Chinese control through sustained resistance, he contends that Taiwan could force China into a strategic dilemma, whether to commit extensive resources indefinitely or withdraw to preserve domestic stability.
However, Taiwan pulling off a successful insurgency against Chinese occupation hinges on its will to resist. Timothy Heath and other writers mention in a June 2023 RAND report that Taiwanese resistance is contingent on the quality of its political leadership and social cohesion.
Heath and others point out that while hardship could rally Taiwanese support behind their leadership, sustained economic and combat losses could just as easily sap the will to resist.
Critically, they highlight that while Taiwan could mount determined resistance for some time, without US military intervention, it would most likely fail given China's overwhelming resources and military advantage.
While China's capabilities to mount a decapitation strike and Taiwan's will to resist are debatable, the performative aspect of the former's drills may be their most important attribute.
Writing for the Global Taiwan Institute (GTI) in April 2025, John Dotson and Jonathan Hartmann argue that political warfare is central to China's military drills.
Dotson and Hartmann say these exercises aim to intimidate Taiwan's population and hold Taiwan responsible for threatening regional peace by promoting the narrative that such exercises are a necessary response to 'Taiwanese independence forces.'
In line with that, Vincent So mentions in an article this month for The Interpreter that China's threats, military exercises and propaganda aim to convince Taiwan that reunification, while not necessarily just, is inevitable.
So writes that China's routine drills and gray zone tactics aim to portray reunification as inevitable, fostering resignation in Taiwan. At the same time, he says, China could exploit Taiwanese elites' family and commercial ties to the mainland, making quiet accommodation and ambiguity preferable to open confrontation and principled resistance.
Asia Times has characterized such an approach as a 'squeeze and relax model,' gradually increasing military and gray zone pressure on Taiwan, followed by some relaxation, a pause for reflection and then high-level talks.
So argues that such strategic encirclement could become a political invitation for bloodless, peaceful reunification. He further argues that the approach puts the US and its allies in a bind over whether military intervention is justified if Taiwan gives in under internal pressure.