Executive Summary
China’s recent maritime drills in the South China Sea, including the deployment of Chinese naval ships, amphibious strike groups, and Coast Guard vessels, suggest that Taiwan must be prepared for a potential amphibious assault on the island. While the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) possesses a substantial conventional maritime advantage over Taiwan, China’s potential amphibious invasion across the Taiwan Strait creates operational vulnerabilities that Taiwan can leverage by strengthening its asymmetric maritime defences. As a result, the US and its key allies should strengthen Taiwan’s asymmetric maritime defences by expanding its naval mine capabilities, constructing artificial reefs as subsurface barriers, and increasing its fleet of midget submarines. Together, these capabilities would offer Taiwan a strategic advantage in the shallow waters of the Taiwan Strait while increasing the barriers to any PLA amphibious assault.
Key Points
- Between July 23–24, the PLA conducted two days of live-fire exercises in the South China Sea, off the coast of China’s southeastern Fujian Province in waters near Dongshan Island, which lies at the southern end of the Taiwan Strait, ~110 nautical miles west of Kaohsiung City, Taiwan’s largest deep-water port.
- The PLA’s live-fire drills occurred a day after US Secretary of State Rubio publicly warned against attempts to disrupt trade flows in the Taiwan Strait, following his meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to discuss several issues, including Taiwan, during the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Summit in the Philippines.
- In the event of Chinese mobilisation toward Taiwan, the PLA’s operational logistics for a Taiwan invasion would involve launching an amphibious assault, deploying conventional maritime forces to land on Taiwan’s beaches.
Analysis
The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) mission approach toward facilitating an amphibious invasion of Taiwan demonstrates operational vulnerabilities, as Chinese amphibious forces travel at relatively slow speeds, suggesting that a one-way transit across the Taiwan Strait would likely leave them exposed to Taiwan’s maritime defences. This operational liability offers a strategic opportunity for Taiwan to disrupt the PLAN’s maritime movement before a potential amphibious assault, increasing the costs associated with military action. Iran’s use of naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz demonstrates how asymmetric maritime capabilities, operating in shallow waters at low cost, can constrain conventional forces. To deter a Chinese amphibious assault, Taiwan can take operational lessons from Iran by strengthening its asymmetric maritime capabilities, particularly through deploying naval mines to slow and channelise PLAN vessel movements, giving Taiwan strategic leverage in the maritime theatre against the PLA.
In a conflict where there exists a significant imbalance in relative military strength, asymmetric tactics can allow the weaker actor to offset some of the advantages enjoyed by its stronger adversary. Naval mines, for instance, can restrict the movement of PLA naval and amphibious forces, disrupt the sequencing of an invasion, and force China to dedicate substantial resources to mine clearance and route protection. Rather than attempting to match China’s naval superiority and missile capabilities directly, Taiwan should focus on imposing costs on the specific capabilities required to conduct an amphibious assault. The strategic objective of such an approach is therefore not to enable Taiwan to defeat China in a conventional contest, but to deter an amphibious invasion by making its success sufficiently difficult and costly that the perceived benefits of military action are outweighed by its risks.
Policy Implications
- Strengthen Taiwan’s naval mine capabilities by increasing US–Taiwan military exercises centred on the operational deployment and strategic positioning of mines in the Taiwan Strait’s shallow waters. Preparing mine deployment locations in advance can shorten operational timelines and signal to the PLA that Taiwan possesses asymmetric capabilities to disrupt amphibious operations and complicate PLA mine-clearing efforts.
- Construct artificial reefs near potential Taiwanese landing beaches to damage and delay PLA amphibious vessels during a Taiwan Strait crossing. Strategically positioning artificial reefs provides Taiwan with military leverage against China’s naval superiority, as artificial reefs hold minimal costs compared to the operational efforts required to neutralise them through precision strikes, forcing the PLA to utilise resources to target subsurface barriers that are difficult to detect.
- Expand Taiwan’s arsenal of midget submarines to strengthen its asymmetric maritime capabilities in shallow-water operations near the Taiwan Strait. Midget submarines provide Taiwan with a strategic advantage, as Iran’s use of similar capabilities in the Strait of Hormuz demonstrates their ability to deter logistics vessels from transporting supplies.
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