A full Chinese invasion of Taiwan will be very hard: Report

Taiwan’s Defence Ministry says a full Chinese invasion of Taiwan with troops landed and ports and airports seized would be very difficult to achieve due to problems China would have in landing and supplying troops.

The latest threat assessment comes amid escalating tensions between Taipei and Beijing. China, which claims the democratically-ruled island as its territory, has stepped up military activities near Taiwan in recent months to pressure it to accept Chinese rule.

In a report to legislators, Taiwan’s Defence Ministry said China’s transport capacity was at present limited, and it would not be able to land all its forces in one go. China would have to rely on “non-standard” roll-on, roll-off ships that would need to use port facilities and transport aircraft that would need airports.

“However, the nation’s military strongly defends ports and airports, and they will not be easy to occupy in a short time. Landing operations will face extremely high risks,” the ministry said in the report, a copy of which was reviewed by the Reuters news agency.

China’s logistics face challenges too, as any landing forces would need to be resupplied with weapons, food and medicines across the Taiwan Strait that separates the two, it added.

“The nation’s military has the advantage of the Taiwan Strait being a natural moat and can use joint intercept operations, cutting off the Communist military’s supplies, severely reducing the combat effectiveness and endurance of the landing forces.”

China would also need to keep some of its forces in reserve to prevent any foreign forces from joining in to help Taiwan and keep a close watch on other fractious areas of China’s border, like with India and in the South China Sea, the ministry said.

“US and Japanese military bases are close to Taiwan, and any Chinese Communist attack would necessarily be closely monitored, plus it would need to reserve forces to prevent foreign military intervention,” it added.

“It is difficult to concentrate all its efforts on fighting with Taiwan.”

Experts say though that China has other means at its disposal to bring Taiwan to its knees short of a full out invasion, including a blockade or targeted missile attacks.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen is overseeing a military modernisation programme to make the island harder to attack, making the military more mobile and with precision weapons like longer-range missiles to take out an attacking force.

The government is planning to spend an extra 240 billion Taiwanese dollars ($8.66bn) over the next five years to go mostly towards naval weapons, including missiles and warships.