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Comment by missedthecue | Hacker News Reader

How hard would it be for China to make sure no ships or airplanes arrive to Taiwan for a few weeks? The island has only days worth of food and energy. No bloody D-Day landings needed to force a political capitulation. To continue to borrow from your example, Russia has completely shut down all commercial Ukrainian seaborne and airborne traffic.

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A blockade of Taiwan could be met with a blockade of China. China can survive much longer on their own supply and reserves. But it’s still something to make them think twice. They don’t have the blue water navy to respond to a blockade. Land connections do not have the scale to work around it.

There’s a small port on the east side of Taiwan which could be used to supply some of the bare necessities. I don’t know if USA would fully enter a war but I do think they might do freedom of navigation exercises east of the island. Would China dear hit a US military vessel with missiles and escalate the conflict. I don’t think so.

Given China's enormous land borders and the surrounding seas they share with south east asian neighbors, it's quite difficult to impose a blockade. Observers have been shocked about China's oil resilience during this whole Hormuz fiasco. What would a blockade of Malacca do aside from starving and pissing off south east asian allies and Japan?

USN on paper not capable of blockading PRC anymore, refer to latest Pentagon China Power report, PRC missiles coverage up to west CONUS, likely further, which means USN is globally vulnerable. Iran's shit tier A2D2 can push USN to standoff range, PRC can push USN out of hemisphere. This not mentioning PRC answer to energy/food blockade is proportional CONUS energy infra strikes to deny CONUS energy. PRC doesn't need blue water navy to break US blockade. Highend rockery breaks USN model at scale, on the cheap, relative to bluewater. There is US subsurface but do the math, US subs will run out of VLS cells before they meaningfully dent size of PRC merchant fleet.

There is no part of TW that is not within PRC land base munition range, every inch can be hit within 7 minutes. Of course PRC would hit US ships in blockade scenario which is by definition war. If USN doesn't blockade, then FONAP does nothing, anything supply ship to west TW would be trivially sunk, NVM legally any ship during PRC TW blockade scenario is running PRC blockade (read: entering sovereign One China waters) and can be treated as hostile. US either tries to blockade (goto war with PRC who will run blockade / test US resolve), and if turns hot, risk its westpac / global replenishment chains (including CENTCOM/CONUS) being blown up, or CONUS hits. Just hitting USN replenishment ships, which are exquisitely vulnerable (has to spend hours in port) means USN becomes single deployment assets, i.e CSG in high tempo operations will exhaust fuel (escorts), munitions in days. USN expeditionary model simply isn't viable vs peer who can cripple US logistics tail within ~10000km radius of PRC. Or US does functionally nothing, i.e. FONAP in TW blockade scenario is theatrics.

Yes they could starve them out and maybe they will. But China is certainly preparing for an amphibious invasion, so they think it might be necessary.

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