On October 14, Beijing warned that Taiwan would have to bear the consequences after Taiwan’s coast guard used a water cannon against a Chinese fishing boat near the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands. Taipei said the vessel had ignored warnings to leave restricted waters. Beijing asserted sovereignty over the area. A confrontation involving a fishing boat might seem peripheral to a discussion of China’s military strategy. Yet it raises a question that deserves more attention: how much authority could Beijing acquire over Taiwan’s affairs before anyone agrees that a war has begun?
I would argue that China’s most useful military advantage may be its ability to make smaller acts of coercion difficult to resist. A credible threat of a larger conflict gives weight to demands that would otherwise be easier to dismiss. Taiwan and its partners therefore need a more demanding test of deterrence than whether Chinese troops have landed. They should ask whether Taiwan can continue trading and governing without accepting Beijing’s permission as a condition. Preparing to defeat an invasion remains essential. Allowing coercion to narrow Taiwan’s choices in the meantime would leave a substantial part of the problem unanswered.
Beijing’s own language helps explain this approach. Its 2019 defense white paper describes a strategy of active defense, combining a defensive strategic posture with offensive action at the operational and tactical levels. In ordinary terms, a government can describe its overall purpose as defensive while preparing to attack in pursuit of that purpose. China’s 2022 Taiwan white paper similarly presents unification as its objective while reserving the use of force. These documents establish Beijing’s stated position; they do not validate its sovereignty claims. They do, however, explain why reassurance based on the word “defensive” is misplaced. The disagreement includes what Beijing believes it is entitled to defend.
This also makes the fixation on 2027 less useful than it first appears. The U.S. intelligence community’s March 2026 threat assessment judged that Chinese leaders did not then plan to invade in 2027 and had no fixed timetable for unification. It also assessed that the People’s Liberation Army was developing the capabilities to seize Taiwan and deter or defeat American intervention. Those judgments can coexist. A force capable of fighting offers political options even when its leaders have not decided to fight. The assessment is a dated judgment, not a guarantee about future decisions. Treating a calendar year as the answer can distract from choices Beijing can make before or after it.
The quieter activity deserves attention on its own terms. In the reporting period ending on October 14, Taiwan’s defense ministry recorded nine Chinese military aircraft sorties, six naval ships, and six official ships around Taiwan. One day’s report cannot establish a trend or tell us what Chinese commanders intend. It does show why looking only for a spectacular exercise is insufficient. These deployments require monitoring and decisions about how to respond. The useful question is what repeated activity allows Beijing to practice, and whether Taiwan gradually accepts restrictions it would previously have contested. A sortie count alone cannot answer either question.
A maritime quarantine illustrates the difficulty. In a 2024 study, CSIS researchers examined hypothetical coast guard-led inspections and reporting requirements that could control selected traffic without immediately stopping every shipment. They distinguished this from a military-led blockade. Their scenarios were possible options, not evidence of a selected Chinese plan. The distinction matters because a demand can sound administrative even when the authority behind it is precisely what Taiwan disputes.
Consider a shipping company confronted with such a demand. It might comply to protect its crew and cargo without endorsing Beijing’s sovereignty claim. My concern is that repeated compliance could still make Chinese approval a practical requirement for reaching Taiwan. Formal recognition would remain unchanged while access became conditional. That would be a political gain for Beijing, although companies could respond differently and Taiwan’s government could contest it. We should not leave commercial operators to resolve that dilemma alone.
The military’s role would remain central even if coast guard vessels conducted the inspections. The threat of escalation could discourage Taiwan from resisting and make outside governments hesitate over how much force to commit. Cyber capabilities can add another source of uncertainty. In February 2024, CISA and its partners warned that Volt Typhoon actors were positioning themselves to disrupt American critical infrastructure during a major crisis or conflict. That warning does not establish that disruption would succeed, or that it would be used in a particular Taiwan scenario. It does show why preparations for a confrontation can reach well beyond the waters where the first incident occurs.
Beijing would still have to make these tools work together. An October 7 CSIS assessment by Lilly Min-Chen Lee and Kateryna Bondar examined China’s study of drone warfare in Ukraine, identifying a gap between recognizing lessons and incorporating them into equipment and training. Their findings concern one area of military adaptation. They are also a reminder of an ordinary organizational problem: recognizing a mistake elsewhere is easier than changing how one’s own people work. The PLA deserves scrutiny rather than an assumption of flawless execution.
A quarantine could also become a conflict Beijing did not intend to start at that moment. A vessel might refuse an inspection. An attempted boarding could produce casualties, forcing governments to respond to an incident they had hoped to contain. CSIS’s 2025 blockade study, based on 26 war-game iterations, found serious dangers for Taiwan’s energy supply alongside substantial escalation risks for China. Its scenarios were not forecasts, and a blockade should not be treated as interchangeable with a limited inspection campaign. The broader caution is persuasive: the ability to initiate pressure does not confer the ability to control everyone’s response. Describing coercion as a cheaper alternative to invasion can obscure how expensive it might become.
The economic leverage is also less one-sided than Beijing might hope. Rhodium Group’s research on a hypothetical blockade identified severe disruptions extending into China’s manufacturing and trade finance, even before sanctions were considered. Its 2022 scenario assumed a halt to Taiwan’s trade, so it cannot supply a price tag for a smaller confrontation in 2026. It does establish why economic dependence cuts both ways. A campaign intended to make Taiwan seem unreliable could also convince businesses that exposure to China is becoming harder to justify. Beijing could try to limit that reaction, but it could not order foreign lenders and customers to remain confident.
Taiwan’s public should not be treated as an audience waiting to be frightened into agreement, either. Hardship could weaken confidence in Taipei or deepen hostility toward Beijing. I am skeptical of arguments that move casually from disruption to surrender. People would have to judge who was responsible, what accepting a demand would cost them, and whether resistance could succeed. The capacity to inflict harm does not settle those political questions.
For Taiwan and its partners, I would put commercial continuity much closer to the center of defense planning. A useful exercise should include shipping operators, insurers, port authorities, and the officials empowered to offer assistance. It should test a concrete problem: what happens when Beijing announces inspections and the first company asks whether it should comply? Participants should have to identify who can issue guidance, who can share reliable information about conditions at sea, and what support could actually be authorized. A promise to discuss these matters after a crisis begins leaves commercial actors making consequential decisions while governments are still organizing a meeting.
I would also examine narrowly defined public guarantees or emergency financial support for operators willing to maintain essential services. Such measures would carry costs, require legal authority, and risk subsidizing decisions that private insurers reasonably consider unsafe. Money cannot make a threatened crew safe. But those limitations are reasons to design and test an arrangement carefully. They are not reasons to assume that a statement of political support will keep ships moving. The objective should be to reduce avoidable withdrawal caused by uncertainty, while preserving honest assessments of physical risk. No responsible policy should ask civilian crews to demonstrate resolve on a government’s behalf without credible protection.
The response at sea would have to be equally deliberate. I would favor agreed procedures for documenting interference and coordinating coast guard responses, with decisions about naval involvement made according to the conduct and danger involved. A refusal to accept a Chinese inspection regime does not require firing at the first Chinese vessel that appears. It does require more preparation than improvising a protest after restrictions have taken effect. Governments should explain what conduct they oppose and retain ways to de-escalate. Deterrence becomes less convincing when officials leave commercial operators uncertain about whether their situation merits any response at all.
This complicates the procurement argument I made in The Second Salvo. I remain convinced that Taiwan should give greater priority to sustaining the forces it already has. But a force designed solely to threaten an invasion fleet cannot be assumed to meet every requirement of a prolonged confrontation over commercial access. Coast guard endurance and a usable maritime presence deserve a serious place in that discussion. A larger vessel may have a defensible role even if it is less attractive in an invasion-focused comparison. The burden is to explain the mission and its cost, rather than allowing either enthusiasm for big ships or enthusiasm for asymmetric weapons to settle the argument in advance.
As October’s confrontations are assessed, I would watch changes in behavior alongside changes in deployments. Are operators altering procedures because of Chinese demands? Can Taiwan continue exercising ordinary authority without each encounter becoming a negotiation over whether it may do so? Are its partners prepared to help before an attack creates an unmistakable emergency? These questions are harder to capture in a headline than another count of warplanes. They get closer to the political purpose those forces can serve. China’s military strategy should be judged by the choices it can impose on others, with equal attention to the costs and resistance it encounters.
Taiwan could avoid an invasion and still emerge from a crisis with less freedom to act. That possibility deserves a defense policy of its own. My position is that preserving commercial access should be a stated objective of deterrence, supported by arrangements that governments and operators have practiced before they are needed. Beijing should face doubt that pressure will produce submission even when it stops short of war. I would judge the result by whether a ship bound for Taiwan can still reach its destination without first asking Beijing for permission.