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September 13 - September 26, 2025
Our Recommended Military Force Structure Changes Taiwan’s defense establishment should accelerate acquisitions to attain the following operational capabilities in the next two years (in order of importance): 4,000+ man-portable air defense missiles (e.g., Stinger) 200+ mobile short-range air defense vehicles, with 3x missile reloads (e.g., MADIS, Avenger/Stinger, Antelope/TC-1) 40+ counter-UAS, counter-rocket, artillery, mortar systems, with 10x missile reloads (e.g., MRIC/SkyHunter, Iron Dome/Tamir) 200+ mobile medium-range antiair missile vehicles, with 5x missile reloads (e.g., NASAMS
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and identifying priority naval troop transport targets 1,000+ small, expendable, autonomous surface/undersea drones for targeting amphibious shipping, both in PRC ports and in transit Enough rifles, pistols, and ammunition such that each member of the military, reserves, and civil defense force has emergency access to a personal weapon that is routinely function-checked and fired 50+ mobile rocket launchers (e.g., HIMARS, RT-2000) with 1,000+ rounds of precision munitions for beach defense (e.g., GMLRS) and 1,000+ rounds of precision munitions for mainland
counterforce targeting (e.g., ATACMS, PrSM) Up to 200 fighter aircraft with antiship and antiair identification and targeting capabilities (e.g., F-16 Viper) 90+ 200-ton class fast-attack missile craft (e.g., Kuanghua FACG) 36+ 600-ton class guided-missile patrol craft (e.g., Tuojiang, Anping PGG) 25+ medium-altitude long-endurance maritime surveillance UAS (e.g., MQ-9 Reaper)...
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LEO internet communications subscriptions 300+ long-range air-to-surface cruise missiles held by US forces outside the First Island Chain, for use by redeployed Taiwanese fighters (e.g., JASSM stored in Guam) 100+ long-range antiship cruise missiles held by US forces outside the First Island...
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For deterrence to be effective, the PRC must believe that Taiwan’s relevant capability can and will be deployed in a contingency.
Qin told his readers that while Beijing would do its “utmost for a peaceful reunification,” it was “not renouncing the use of force” to deter “separatists and external interference.”1
While the previous chapter addressed China’s potential use of force, this chapter discusses the other side of Qin’s proverbial coin: China’s non-kinetic options for seducing, intimidating, and subjugating Taiwan.
Specifically, Taiwan should focus on acquiring the latest tools for blocking cyber intrusions and countering mis- and disinformation; adjusting the way it talks about air and naval intrusions carried out by the People’s Republic of China (PRC); acquiring persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities; and improving its ability to communicate and endure in the face of a sustained blockade.
But it also highlights an unfortunate paradox: Taiwan must continue to resist China’s non-kinetic efforts. Yet the more the CCP loses faith that it can succeed in the gray zone, the more it will be compelled to choose force instead.
The CCP is waging a multifaceted cyber and information campaign against Taiwan.
China also exploits Taiwan’s commitment to free speech.
Opposition-leaning (“pan-blue”) media, especially, often amplify content that is critical of the United States or supports Beijing’s preferred narratives.
At the same time, it is important not to overstate the impact of China’s information campaigns, which are often diluted by Beijing’s self-inflicted setbacks. For example, Xi Jinping’s remarks on cross-strait relations in January 2019—during which he insisted that the discredited “one country, two systems” formula must be applied to Taiwan—garnered near-universal disapproval in Taiwan.
Indeed, China’s propaganda and influence operations have not arrested, much less reversed, this trajectory.8 As a result, most Taiwanese don’t advocate for formal independence to avoid provoking Beijing, but they increasingly regard Taiwan as a nation separate from China.9 Alarmed, Beijing is turning to more sticks and fewer carrots.
is also possible that Xi Jinping’s ham-fisted overreach may have more to do with the ineffectiveness of China’s political warfare efforts than Taiwan’s inherent resilience.
To this end, in 2022, Taiwan launched the Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA) to coordinate government and nongovernmental efforts to combat disinformation.
Taiwan should enact bans on PRC-based cloud infrastructure and social media providers, as it did with Huawei and ZTE telecommunications infrastructure a decade ago. Although not a panacea, such restrictions will provide Taipei with greater trust in the data and algorithms that are generating the content consumed by the Taiwanese people.
MODA also coordinates Taiwan’s resistance and response to cyber intrusions.
As the 2022 attacks highlighted, China possesses cyber capabilities that could severely disrupt or damage Taiwan’s critical infrastructure and military facilities.
The PRC complements its information warfare with economic warfare, and the two are often intertwined. China pressures multinational companies not to veer from its preferred political positions, as Marriott, Delta, and the National Basketball Association have learned in recent years.
The CCP threatens and fines China-based subsidiaries of Taiwanese businesses suspected of supporting the incumbent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) while doling out profits to those that mimic China’s party line.16
PRC representatives also support local Taiwanese officials willing to echo Beijing’s talking points by favoring their constituencies for investment and business deals. Conversely, Beijing targets DPP stronghol...
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decade ago, the then ruling Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), quietly negotiated a services trade agreement with Beijing. The agreement would have opened large sectors of Taiwan’s economy to the PRC. The KMT government, knowing the agreement would prove unpopular, attempted to push it through the legislature without public review. This incited the Sunflower Movement, when student protesters occupied the legislative building for twenty-four days, delivering knockout blows to both the mooted agreement and the KMT’s popular support.
Under the New Southbound Policy (NSP), Taiwan’s government has enacted policies to economically diversify away from China by incentivizing Taiwanese investment in South and Southeast Asia while putting curbs on business with the mainland, especially in the prized semiconductor industry.
Taipei could reinforce its economic diversification efforts while also better aligning itself with maritime Southeast Asian states, the concept of a free and open Indo-Pacific, and international law by debunking and refuting maritime claims stemming from China’s infamous South China Sea (SCS) “nine-dash line” (now ten dashes). Such claims stem from Republic of China (ROC) maps that predate the founding of the PRC. Taiwan holds these maps in its archives. It could cite them while clarifying its maritime claims to accord with a ruling from the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016, which
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Many of the air and naval activities that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) carries out are best understood as political signaling.
It is therefore important for Taiwan to keep the PLA’s air and naval patrols and exercises in their proper context.
The media’s obsession with Chinese intrusions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), and over the so-called centerline, is also misleading and unhelpful. Both control measures were designed for a bygone era and never elicited PRC buy-in in any case. Taiwan’s Cold War–era ADIZ encompasses roughly four hundred nautical miles of China’s coastline, nearly half the distance from the Shandong peninsula to Hainan Island.
Taipei argues that Beijing should honor Taiwan’s ADIZ even as Taipei ignores China’s ADIZ, which overlaps Taiwan’s.
Taipei’s unofficial strait centerline is similarly rooted in the Cold War. It served as a western limit to the operations of US military aircraft, which were not treaty-bound to defend Taiwan’s offshore islands. It wasn’t until 2004, as the PLA acquired more modern combat aircraft, that Taipei explicitly defined the centerline as a no-go area for the PRC.
Our Recommended Divestments and Transfers
Divest amphibious assault. Taiwan does not have a requirement to attack a beach in any realistic contingency scenario.
Divest armor. Armor is optimized for offense across open terrain.
Transfer and divest naval surface combatants.
Divest manned aircraft.
Divest ASW helicopters.
Divest submarines.
Transfer transport aircraft.
The middle portion of the centerline, however, is less than 40 nm from key strategic nodes such as Taipei Port and Taiwan’s largest airport. In 2020, China crossed the middle portions of the centerline twice—both timed to coincide with Taipei meetings between high-level US officials and the Taiwanese president—to send unmistakable political signals.
Overall, the PRC’s military gray-zone strategy is not bearing fruit. Compared with a decade ago, Taiwanese society is arguably further from being enticed or coerced into political union with China.21
Taiwan cannot prevail in the gray zone by countering China symmetrically. Claims that Taiwan can deter PLA air and naval “incursions” with ever more fighter intercepts and surface combatant patrols strain credulity and misunderstand the purpose of the PLA provocations.
If Taiwan responds with force to PRC bullying at sea, the PLA will simply continue up the escalation ladder. Beijing could even decide to seize Pratas Reef or an offshore island.
No Taiwanese leader can afford to give Xi a pretext for attacking by taking the first swing, which Beijing would accuse Taipei of doing regardless of the facts.
Keeping things in perspective, Taiwan’s defense planners should remember that the PLA’s land-based missile threat can visit more death and destruction on Taiwan than all the PLA’s fighters, bombers, and surface combatants combined.
Therefore, instead of confronting the PLA in the global commons, the Taiwanese government should counter gray-zone political warfare with its own version of the same.
scrambles to conserve resources, but it should also align its messaging to blunt the PLA’s political warfare aims.
Instead, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) should use Taiwan’s official maritime boundaries map when depicting PLA activity. This map does not depict either the ADIZ or the centerline. It does, however, demarcate Taipei’s territorial baselines and territorial seas. This is the critical, realistic, and legitimate area that Taiwan must defend—it also matches the territories covered by the Taiwan Relations Act.
Japan shows even more restraint than the United States. With the high frequency of PLA flights into Japan’s ADIZ, Japan does not advertise these incursions.25 (It is worth noting that US, Japanese, and other allied military aircraft routinely operate in China’s ADIZ—the PRC does not amplify these “incursions” either.) Instead, Tokyo publicizes select incidents of PRC government transits into the contiguous zone and territorial seas around the Senkaku Islands,
PLA exercises and patrols in international waters do not themselves endanger Taiwan’s military, people, territory, or prosperity. However, the presence of Taiwanese forces in proximity to Chinese ships and jets does increase the chance of inadvertent escalation and the opportunity for intentional escalation.
When practical, Taiwan should opt for data-as-a-service subscriptions or leased hardware instead of purchasing new platforms.
