Will China Move To Occupy Taiwan’s Offshore Islands?

Likelihood Of Beijing Moving To Occupy Any Of Taiwan’s Offshore Islands

So, overall, China appears to be escalating its tactics aimed at undermining the confidence of residents in Taiwan’s offshore islands in their own government through coercion by undertaking grey zone tactics as well as coast guard patrols inside restricted waters around these islands.

In addition to that China is also moving fast on infrastructure projects linking these islands with itself that hold promises of economic advantages for the island residents, as well as undertaking concrete actions to incentivise the residents on these islands to migrate to mainland China.

All of this creates enough ground, in the Author’s assessment, to suspect a possible attempt by China to absorb one of Taiwan’s outlying island groups whenever circumstances are sufficiently conducive in Beijing’s view.

For example, and perhaps this may come across as a surprise to the readers, the return of Donald Trump as the President of the United States may end up creating circumstances that Beijing could consider as favorable for such an undertaking.

Now, the Author is not reiterating the suggestion that Trump will sacrifice Taiwan for some kind of a grand bargain with Beijing which many have been making since the start of his second term this year.

This is because, Trump, or any US President for that matter, does not possess enough political capital to make such a sacrifice, given the strong bipartisan support that Taiwan enjoys among the US’ law makers as well as the overall US citizenry.⁵

So, what the Author is attempting here is to make a counter-intituitive suggestion that Trump’s transactional nature and the unpredictability of how it could impact the US’ foreign policy, may end up creating circumstances that Beijing views as conducive for its plans to occupy one or more of Taiwan’s offshore islands.

Since his return to the US Presidency, Trump’s position on Taiwan has been fluctuating while his administration was pursuing a trade deal with China.

For instance, Trump in the initial weeks of his second term was exhibiting his transactional nature of conducting foreign policy by pressuring Taiwan to increase its defense spending and purchase more advanced US military systems, which could potentially put a strain on its economy.

However, a month ahead of his summit with China’s President Xi Jinping that occurred on October 30^th in South Korea, his administration reportedly paused US$400 million worth of weapons aid to Taiwan which included orders for lethal munitions and autonomous drones, sparking fears that the US could be using its support for Taiwan as a leverage in its negotiations with China.

Moreover, Xi was expected to seek a public declaration from Trump during the aforesaid summit in South Korea that the United States “opposes” Taiwan’s independence, shifting its incumbent position, which is that the United States does “not support” its independence.

Now, Trump did not make such a declaration and apparently Taiwan did not even come up in his discussions with Xi, however, the reports of Trump administration’s pause of weapons aid to Taiwan ahead of this summit, if true, create an atmosphere of uncertainty around Trump’s position on Taiwan.

This is because, Trump, after his summit with Xi concluded, announced that he is going to visit China in April 2026 while being less specific about a reciprocal visit by Xi to the US, saying that the Chinese President “will be coming here some time after that. Whether it’s in Florida, Palm Beach or Washington DC”.

So, considering the US’ pause on weapons aid to Taiwan ahead of Trump-Xi summit in South Korea in October 2025, the question arises, will the US take similar measures in the advance of Trump’s visit to China in April 2026 or Xi’s visit to the US after that.

This uncertainty around Trump’s position on Taiwan also increases avenues for China to exploit the rifts within the island nation’s domestic politics.

For instance, Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), strongly emphasizes the US’ role as a security guarantor for the nation, however, the opposition Kuomintang questions the US’ reliability, often mirroring a theme that is prevalent in mainland China’s propaganda. For example, a think tank affiliated with KMT in January said that Taiwan could not depend on military support from the Trump administration and should instead work towards fostering better relations with China.

Now, let us briefly see how much does KMT’s assertions of US’ unreliability as a security guarantor resonates with Taiwan’s electorate. Per the 2024 survey carried out by Taiwan’s Academia Sinica and Soochow University, 71% of individuals who identified as DPP voters perceive the US as a reliable nation. Conversely, only 16% of KMT voters shared this belief.

Now, add to all of this, the threats from Trump to levy tariffs against imported semiconductors, which can potentially shift the Taiwan electorate more toward support for KMT or other political figures who favor policies that better accommodate Beijing’s interests.

An instance of this political divide in Taiwan over relations with the US, was observed a mere hours after Trump’s inauguration in Washington, when Taiwan’s parliament which is controlled by the opposition coalition, comprising the Kuomintang party and the smaller Taiwan People’s Party, voted to freeze roughly 40% percent of Taiwan’s regular defense budget, half the budget for its new Indigenous submarine program, and one-third that would fund a new drone manufacturing park.

Vice Minister of Defense Po Horng-huei remarked that the freeze would adversely affect the military’s capability to respond to China’s routine provocations, which include warplane sorties into the island’s air defense identification zone and coast guard patrols in the restricted waters of Taiwan’s outlying Kinmen island.

That said, it is also important to point out that Trump’s unpredictability is a problem for Beijing as well, and given the unfavorable views toward China as well as strong support for Taiwan within the US’ polity and citizenry, especially among Trump’s own support base, China must tread lightly.

For instance, in August, President Trump said that President Xi himself told him that China would not invade Taiwan so long as he is the US President, which goes to show how important Taiwan is for his domestic politics because if China does invade Taiwan during Trump’s tenure as a US President, then he will be faced with a credibility crisis which could compel him to act strongly against China.

So, basically, there is a limit to how much of an opportunity Trump’s ambiguity on Taiwan can provide for China, and what the Author is suggesting here, is that there is a remote possibility of Beijing considering being able to occupy one of Taiwan’s offshore islands as lying within that limit.

Absorbing one of Taiwan’s offshore islands will allow China to test the proverbial waters by eliciting a response from the international community as well as the political forces within Taiwan, without invading the island nation, quite like how Russia did with its annexation of Crimea in 2014.

For instance, China’s state-owned media has already begun giving indications that its actions pertaining to Kinmen can be gradually expanded to the entirety of Taiwan to undertake a future quarantine or blockade of the island nation.

As discussed earlier, a social media account affiliated with China Central Television (CCTV), named yuyuan tantian (玉渊谭天), described China’s activities around Kinmen in May 2024 as part of its two-day Joint Sword-2024A military exercise involving the China Coast Guard (CCG) as the ‘Kinmen Model’.

Now, roughly a year after the said activities the PLA and CCG carried out a large-scale training exercise around Taiwan labelled Strait Thunder-A in April 2025, which yuyuan tantian described as having marked a shift in China’s actions from the Kinmen Model to the Island Control Model for securing maritime control.

This shift, according to yuyuan tantian, was observed based on the differences in the activities of the PLA and CCG during the Joint Sword-2024A exercise in May 2024 and the Strait Thunder-A exercise in April 2025.

While the exercise in May 2024 focused on controlling waters around Kinmen, Wuqiu, Dongyin and the core Matsu islands, the latest exercise in April 2025 entailed CCG patrols around the whole of Taiwan’s main island and from the northern to the southern end of the Taiwan strait. So, yuyuan tantian stated that with the Kinmen Model’s patrolling of Kinmen and smaller islands having become normalised, similar tactics can now be adopted for a campaign involving the whole of Taiwan.

Also, during the Strait Thunder-A exercise, the PLA practiced simultaneous ‘multi-directional precision strikes’, which yuyuan tantian described as an indication of the PLA’s ‘improvement in precision-strike systems and capabilities’, suggesting that Taiwan can be blockaded using PLA’s precision strike capabilities in conjunction with the CCG’s patrols throughout Taiwanese territory.

Similar suggestion of combining PLA’s precision strikes and CCG’s patrols to blockade Taiwan was made in an article in June 2025 by a Chinese military magazine, called the ‘Beijing Weapons Magazine’, wherein it said that a strong coastguard force could steadily advance in key waters while the PLA undertakes ‘high-altitude and long-range firepower’ which forms ‘a powerful coordination network’ as part of a ‘three-dimensional combat blueprint’.

 

Tanmay Kadam is a geopolitical observer based in India. He has experience working as a Defense and International Affairs journalist for EurAsian Times. He can be contacted at tanmaykadam700@gmail.com

1. Koichiro Matsumoto, The Lai Administration’s First Anniversary and the Gray Zone Situation Surrounding the Dongsha Islands, The Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA), May 14^th, 2025 ↩︎
2. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, September 22, 2025 by Institute for Study of War (ISW) and American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI’s) Critical Threats Project. ↩︎
3. Ian Murphy, China’s Infrastructure Warfare Against Kinmen, Taiwan Insight, June 7^th, 2024 ↩︎
4. Ian Murphy & Eric Chan, Countering Cognitive Warfare: Taiwan’s Defense Against Party Influence in Kinmen, Global Taiwan Institute, July 24^th, 2024 ↩︎
5. Brendan Flynn, Why Trump Won’t Sacrifice Taiwan, Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), May 27^th, 2025 ↩︎