Beijing is more likely to carry out a blockade or economic warfare against Taiwan rather than an invasion, witnesses and lawmakers said at a congressional hearing on Thursday, even as they urged the US to prepare for all scenarios.
“The most likely scenario is they’re going to try this cyber-enabled economic warfare campaign,” said Mark Montgomery, a retired US rear admiral and senior director at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, testifying before the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
“Beijing will want to force Taiwan’s capitulation through less drastic methods” than a military takeover, he added.
As for what such a campaign would entail, Montgomery believed it would target Taiwan’s financial, energy and telecommunications sectors, and involve “malicious” cyber activity.
Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and is committed to arming it.
In recent years, the US has grown increasingly anxious about a mainland takeover, with officials and lawmakers eyeing 2027 as a possible window, and pointing to more frequent People’s Liberation Army sorties crossing the Taiwan Strait’s median line as signs of growing aggression.
Nevertheless, some at Thursday’s hearing said that increased PLA activity did not necessarily indicate an imminent or likely invasion.
“While these air crossings happen almost daily, making invasion seem possible, a more likely scenario is a CCP-led blockade of the island,” said Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat and the committee’s ranking member.
Taiwan should stockpile commodities like natural gas, soy and corn as a way to deter such a blockade, the congressman added.
And even if a mainland invasion was not likely, the US still needed to prepare for it, witnesses said.
Beijing’s “goal would be to subjugate Taiwan without invading”, said Charles Flynn, a retired US army general, but “we cannot discount the threat that they pose by what they do with their air, maritime and ground forces”.
Flynn, who served as commander of US Army Pacific from 2021 to 2024, warned on Thursday that the US must bolster its land-based military capabilities in case it needed to support the self-governed island militarily.
“For far too long, we’ve invested in exquisite systems to fight a sea and air campaign but left ourselves exposed where it matters most: on land where wars are won or lost,” he said.
Meanwhile, Kurt Campbell, deputy secretary of state under former US president Joe Biden, testified that Washington should invest more in its naval capabilities to deter any aggression from Beijing.
“This is a naval theatre,” Campbell said, adding that America’s answer to a potential mainland blockade of Taiwan would be its submarine force.
