A new report predicts that China intends to first non-militarily conquer Taiwan through “energy coercion” and then trigger a “global catastrophe” by wreaking havoc to the island’s chip-building capabilities.
The report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) warns that China’s strategy for conquering Taiwan involves “the use of economic, legal, and cyber levers to throttle Taiwan’s fuel supply and fracture its political will.”
“Rather than launch a sudden maritime blockade or kinetic invasion, Beijing is more likely to pursue a subtler campaign, one that begins with administrative actions and regulatory pressure, such as Coast Guard inspections disguised as routine maritime enforcement,” the report continues.
The goal of using this “ambiguous, publicly restrained, and strategically deniable” pressure will be “to paralyze Taiwan before it can respond while sowing division among Taipei’s partners.”
In other words, China wants to exhaust the resisters in Taiwan.
China isn’t planning a war — it’s engineering Taiwan’s surrender.
The strategy? Energy coercion. Beijing is using economic, legal, and cyber tools to choke Taiwan’s fuel supply.
New FDD Memo by @CraigMSingleton, @MarkCMontgomery & Benjamin Jensen: https://t.co/qRWFlOJc8W pic.twitter.com/uDLKobrXMo
— FDD (@FDD) November 17, 2025
“Beijing’s goal isn’t to invade today, but to make Taiwan believe resistance is futile tomorrow,” reporter and author Craig Singleton told Fox News. “Its gray-zone campaign is a strategy of slow-motion strangulation — one that risks a sudden shock as Chinese ships and aircraft surge around the island.”
This prediction is based on a tabletop exercise or game conducted this summer by FDD and Taiwan’s Centre for Innovative Democracy and Sustainability at National Chengchi University.
In the exercise, teams representing Taiwan, the United States, Japan, and others had to respond after a team representing China started using administrative actions and regulatory pressure to squeeze Taiwan.
What the study ultimately found was that a l0ng-enough squeeze targeting Taiwan’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) could take down its electrical grid and wreck its ability to manufacture chips.
“A successful effort by China to squeeze Taiwan’s liquid natural gas (LNG) supply to a trickle will lead to a 50 percent reduction in Taiwan’s electrical grid capacity,” the report notes. “This will eventually lead Taiwan’s leadership to a ‘Sophie’s Choice’ — provide power to its public health and safety systems, such as hospitals, schools, and homes, or power its industrial capacity, such as chip manufacturers like TSMC and UMC, and hundreds of associated supply chain companies.”
“The choice to slowly shutter industrial capacity would eventually make Taiwan’s conundrum a global catastrophe when a plurality of the world’s supply of legacy chips and a supermajority of its advanced chips cease flowing,” the report continues.
The only way to counter China, FDD argues, is for all of Taiwan’s allies, including the United States, to “provide [Taiwan] economic support, bolster energy diversification, support technical redundancy, or signal a willingness to protect maritime transportation.”
“Success depends on coordinated efforts to support deterrence and complicate Beijing’s strategic calculus — not just from Taipei and Washington but from Tokyo, Canberra, and Brussels as well,” FDD’s report points out.
.@CraigMSingleton Ben Jensen & I have finished our look at China’s ability to execute an energy coercion campaign against Taiwan. The west is vulnerable in this scenario but there are many actions that can be taken in energy, maritime & cyber realms @FDD https://t.co/ZLBFftKeBS
— Mark Montgomery (@MarkCMontgomery) November 17, 2025
What makes Taiwan particularly susceptible to Chinese bullying and pressure is that 98 percent of its energy is imported.
“Almost half of all of Taiwan’s electricity is generated from LNG, and another 30 percent from coal, both of which are imported,” FDD notes. “Taiwan can only store a limited amount of these fuels — a few months’ worth of coal and only a few weeks’ worth of LNG2 — limiting Taipei’s capacity to stockpile supplies in the event of a crisis.”
Moreover, Taiwan’s three top LNG terminals are located within range of China’s missiles. And additionally, Taiwan relies on the Taiwan Strait for its imports.
The latter also presents a problem because “[t]hrough consistent exercises, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has increasingly normalized military simulations of blockades and coercive maritime operations in the Taiwan Strait aimed at disrupting commercial traffic and asserting control over critical sea lanes.”
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Vivek@bizpacreview.com
V. Saxena is a staff writer for BizPac Review with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University.
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