November 18, 2024: This year China has been unusually active carrying out air and naval operations near or around Taiwan. At the rate of about once a month, Chinese forces move menacingly near Taiwan. For example, in May China carried out military exercises that encircled Taiwan using 111 aircraft and 46 warships. This was seen as practice for a rapid blockade of Taiwan. There was no sign of how Taiwan would deal with an actual encirclement and blockade.

Taiwan has a powerful ally and protector in the United States. The Americans passed laws obliging them to continually supply Taiwan with new weapons and direct military assistance if Taiwan is attacked. American allies South Korea and Japan, together with the American Pacific Fleet, match, and probably exceed the capabilities of the new Chinese fleet.

Taiwan has a small navy consisting of four destroyers, 22 frigates, three corvettes, 37 patrol boats, some armed with an anti-ship missile, and four submarines. The U.S. Navy always has two or three carrier task forces in the Western Pacific. Each Task force is based on a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (CVN) plus three or four escort ships and an unseen nuclear attack submarine (SSN) which periodically sends a communications float to surface to send and receive encrypted messages about the status of the SSN and any useful information recently obtained. Incoming information has to do with any new orders for the SSN and when the next communications float should be sent to the surface.

SSNs are equipped with passive/listen only sensors that enable them to track activity on the surface. These sensors can differentiate between warships and commercial ships and even identify warships by type. While SSNs are largely invulnerable to attack if they move slowly and keep quiet, the carrier task forces have several types of Chinese ballistic and cruise missiles aimed at them.

If China attacked Taiwan, they want to avoid war with the United States if possible because a prolonged US naval blockade of China would weaken the Chinese Communist Party control over China. A blockade would halt oil imports, which are essential to keeping Chinese industries operational. Food imports are not essential to prevent starvation but do enable Chinese to enjoy a more varied and pleasing diet. Returning to a bland diet after decades of much better cuisine would cause some anger, but no serious anti-government action. This failure would be yet another example of failure for the current, since 2012, failure prone Chinese leader Xi Jinping. During the last few years, Xi has made mistakes that caused economic problems. His campaigns against corruption had mixed results, as did his efforts to reform the equally corrupt armed forces.

Despite these problems, the Chinese navy has become increasingly aggressive in the South China Sea. The Philippines is taking most of the punishment from aggressive Chinese naval activities. There have been injuries among Filipino sailors. The Philippines and the United States have a mutual defense treaty but the Filipinos have told the Americans that they want to handle China by themselves. The Chinese are well aware of the mutual defense treaty and don't want to trigger it. The Filipinos consider their treaty with the Americans as a last ditch option. The threat to implement the treaty means the Chinese have to be careful how far they push the Philippines over control of the South China Sea,

While Chinese naval and air forces are a major presence in the West Pacific, the US Navy could intercept almost all Chinese sea trade from well beyond Chinese naval and air range. A war would halt that trade, and this would hurt China more than the rest of the world. Taiwan is well aware of this and knows that disruption of seaborne trade is something China wants to avoid because even a few months of blockade would cause significant Chinese economic and internal political problems. While China is still a communist dictatorship, the government is not as all-powerful as it once was and fears widespread violence if there are widespread and intense economic problems.

Any Chinese attack on Taiwan would have to win quickly so the Chinese could declare a ceasefire and demand that the United States negotiate. To avoid that fate Taiwan has developed tactics that employ thousands of small, armed with explosives, drones attacking the Chinese fleet closing in on Taiwan. These drones would navigate autonomously until they encountered the Chinese warships and then switch to an attack guidance system. China is seeking ways to disrupt such attacks, but the Taiwanese are always developing new countermeasures for that. For example, Taiwan initially discovered that the manufacturer of the small drones it needed was Chinese and that meant Taiwan had to find another supplier for the drones. That was done but it takes time for that supplier to increase production to deliver the large number of drones needed for the armed swarm.