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On Dec. 29, 2025, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense reported one of the most intense single-day episodes of Chinese military activity in recent years. Over 100 Chinese aircraft were detected operating around the island, not merely signaling but actively compressing Taiwan’s defensive space. Of these, 90 aircraft crossed the median line, effectively erasing a boundary that had kept the peace for decades. More ominously, these air assets were joined by 13 Chinese warships and, crucially, 14 official ships from the China Coast Guard and Maritime Safety Administration.

The escalation did not stop at encirclement. On Dec. 30, the Chinese military fired 27 rockets from Fujian, 10 of which landed in the waters southwest of Taiwan directly inside the 24-nautical-mile contiguous zone.

This was a historic breach, demonstrating the ability to threaten key ports like Kaohsiung with cheap artillery rather than expensive ballistic missiles. Tensions peaked when a Taiwanese frigate, the Pan Chao, was accused by a Chinese destroyer of locking its fire control radar onto the vessel. No shots were fired. No formal crisis was declared. Yet for several hours, the machinery of escalation sat visibly primed.

That pattern of high-intensity military activity, deliberately calibrated to stop short of open conflict, has become increasingly familiar in the Taiwan Strait. It is also increasingly misunderstood.

Recent Chinese military exercises around Taiwan are widely interpreted as rehearsals for invasion. Live-fire drills, missile launches, air and naval encirclement, and amphibious signaling appear at first glance to confirm long-standing fears of an imminent cross-strait war. That interpretation is understandable, yet incomplete. It risks mistaking the visible mechanics of military power for the underlying logic of how Beijing appears to think about victory.

Much like military parades, freedom of navigation operations, or other headline-grabbing demonstrations of resolve, large-scale exercises are easy to mistake for strategy itself. They look decisive. But as with many modern displays of power, the real question is not what they show, but what they are meant to produce. What if these episodes are not primarily about practicing how to seize Taiwan, but about practicing how to immobilize it, and those who would come to its defense, long before a decision for war is ever required?

Seen through that lens, China’s recent actions point toward a theory of success that does not rely on decisive battle or territorial conquest, but on sustained pressure, ambiguity, and delay. Rather than seeking victory through destruction, Beijing appears increasingly focused on achieving political outcomes through paralysis: exhausting decision-making processes, fracturing alliances, and reshaping perceptions of risk and inevitability. This approach does not reject deterrence theory. It exploits its blind spots.

This logic is not alien to coercion theory. Thomas Schelling famously argued that coercion operates through bargaining, the manipulation of risk, and the power of threats that leave something to chance. What distinguishes a paralysis strategy is that risk is not merely signaled — it is externalized onto markets, insurers, and allied political processes. Similarly, as Daniel Byman and Matthew Waxman observe, coercion often succeeds or fails not on battlefield balance but on how uncertainty, domestic constraints, and coalition politics shape decision-making. In the Taiwan Strait, paralysis exploits those dynamics by stretching time until restraint becomes self-reinforcing.

That narrative logic was reinforced in General Secretary Xi Jinping’s New Year’s Eve address, delivered immediately after the conclusion of the latest round of exercises. In that speech, Xi described reunification with Taiwan as “unstoppable,” framing it as a historical inevitability rather than a contingent political choice. The sequencing matters. When rhetoric of inevitability follows closely on demonstrations of military encirclement, the combined message is not simply one of resolve but of foreclosed alternatives. It is an attempt to condition expectations at home, in Taiwan, and among external actors about what outcomes should be regarded as natural, prudent, or futile to resist.

From Beijing’s perspective, this approach is neither unprecedented nor accidental. Its logic is rooted in modern Chinese strategic thought, particularly Mao Zedong’s theory of protracted war, which treated time, endurance, and political cohesion as decisive variables. Mao emphasized the gradual exhaustion of an adversary’s will rather than rapid battlefield decision, framing conflict not as a race toward decisive engagement but as a process of shaping political, psychological, and organizational conditions until resistance became unsustainable. What mattered most was not the moment of battle, but the strategic environment in which choices were made, constrained, and ultimately foreclosed. That logic was subsequently institutionalized within Chinese military doctrine, which increasingly frames coercion as a means of shaping political outcomes short of war. Contemporary Chinese military writing discusses options such as maritime exclusion, airspace control, and economic pressure explicitly as tools for testing resolve and altering decision calculus without immediately triggering large-scale intervention.

Western as well as Japanese and Australian deterrence thinking in the Taiwan Strait, however, remains overwhelmingly invasion-centric. The core question animating strategy debates is whether China can successfully conduct and sustain a large-scale amphibious assault before the United States and its allies can intervene decisively. From force posture to weapons procurement, deterrence by denial has been framed around preventing or defeating that assault. Taiwan’s emphasis on asymmetric defense, mobile fires, air and maritime denial, and resilient command and control reflects this logic, as do evolving U.S. operational concepts designed to complicate a cross-strait landing.

Recent War on the Rocks analysis has described a growing deterrence gap in the Taiwan Strait, driven by diverging perceptions of risk, resolve, and escalation incentives. What a paralysis framework adds is the possibility that deterrence can be bypassed entirely, not by crossing red lines, but by exploiting the time it takes coalitions to decide whether those lines have been crossed at all.

These investments in denial and asymmetric defense are serious and necessary, but invasion-centric deterrence carries an implicit assumption: War, if it comes, will arrive in a recognizable form. It presumes a discrete crossing of thresholds clear enough to trigger unified political responses and rapid military action. It also assumes that battlefield outcomes are the primary mechanism by which political decisions are forced. China’s recent exercises suggest a different wager.

A coercive quarantine achieves strategic effect not by physical interdiction, but by exploiting asymmetries in time, risk tolerance, and decision-making speed. Beijing does not need to stop every ship: It needs only to raise the perceived probability of interference high enough that insurers, shippers, and port operators judge the route commercially unstable. The sequence is cumulative. China announces temporary inspection zones or exclusion measures under a law enforcement pretext, then enforces them unevenly through coast guard patrols, selective delays, and highly visible incidents. Those incidents trigger insurance reassessments, premium spikes, and rerouting decisions. As shipping slows, Taiwan’s narrow energy margins — especially liquefied natural gas — compress into a political timeline measured in days rather than weeks. Rolling industrial disruptions and grid stress follow, turning a maritime problem into a domestic legitimacy crisis. Meanwhile, allied governments confront a slower dilemma: whether to escort, counter-quarantine, or accept ambiguity while they consult. In the gap between market speed and coalition speed, paralysis takes hold. Taiwan’s defeat in this scenario is not occupation, but coerced accommodation under mounting economic pressure and the visible realization that external support is delayed, contested, or conditional.

Seen in this light, the most striking feature of the drills was not their scale, but their character. Rather than focusing narrowly on amphibious landings, they emphasized encirclement, blockade-like maneuvers, missile demonstrations short of impact, and the coordinated use of naval, air, rocket, and coast guard forces. This prominent inclusion of law enforcement vessels is not accidental. It signals a shift from preparing for military conquest to rehearsing a strategy of quarantine.

The distinction between a blockade and a quarantine is vital, yet often overlooked. A blockade is a recognized act of war under international law, entitling the blockading power to attack breaching vessels but also triggering neutrality laws that force third parties to declare their status. A quarantine, however, operates in the gray zone. Beijing frames it not as a military operation, but as a domestic law enforcement action led by the China Coast Guard to inspect ships for contraband or safety violations within its own claimed waters. A quarantine built around coast guard enforcement and selective inspections is uniquely difficult to counter because it blurs the line between military and civilian authority while remaining legally reversible, complicating collective response and buying time for coercive pressure to accumulate.

This legal ambiguity is a strategic weapon. A quarantine is reversible. It can be tightened or loosened without the humiliating binary of winning or losing a war. It places the burden of escalation squarely on the United States. If a U.S. Navy destroyer intervenes to stop a China Coast Guard vessel from inspecting a cargo ship, Washington is technically interfering in a domestic law enforcement matter and firing the first shot. This hesitation is exactly what Beijing seeks to exploit.

While the mechanism is legal ambiguity, the target is physical: Taiwan’s fragility in energy security. The island imports roughly 98 percent of its energy, and its reliance on liquefied natural gas creates a critical vulnerability. Unlike coal, which can be stockpiled for months, liquid natural gas boils off and requires continuous replenishment. Current estimates suggest Taiwan’s effective liquid natural gas reserves hover around just 11 days.

Two caveats matter. Taiwan is not passive: It has pursued mitigation measures including expanded storage, diversified supply routes, and contingency planning. Nor would a limited quarantine be cost-free for Beijing, which would incur diplomatic backlash, economic disruption, and escalation risk. But these caveats do not negate the vulnerability: They clarify the logic of coercion. Paralysis does not require inevitability. It requires only that uncertainty accumulates faster than political consensus can form. A coercive campaign need not be airtight to be effective — it need only raise perceived risk enough to disrupt markets. If insurance premiums spike and underwriters judge the route unstable, commercial tankers need not be stopped by force to stay away. In such a scenario, paralysis sets in not when the gas runs out, but when the market decides the route is no longer viable.

Modern Chinese doctrine reinforces this preference for pressure over collision. The People’s Liberation Army has for decades emphasized the “Three Warfares”: the coordinated use of public-opinion shaping, psychological pressure, and legal framing to influence the strategic environment. The purpose is not persuasion in the narrow sense, but the gradual constriction of an adversary’s perceived options. Legal ambiguity blurs thresholds. Psychological pressure — exemplified by canceling nearly 900 flights during the drills — exploits fear of isolation. Public narratives frame outcomes as historically settled. Together, these efforts are designed to exhaust decision-making long before decisive force is required.

However, this strategy of paralysis is not without its own existential risks for Beijing. The “silicon shield” that protects Taiwan also binds China. A quarantine that strangles Taiwan’s power grid would shutter the semiconductor fabs that Beijing’s own economy relies upon, potentially causing a catastrophic contraction in China’s manufacturing sector. Furthermore, a quarantine is inherently leaky. If Taiwan refuses to submit, or if the United States and Japan organize convoys to break the cordon, China faces a dangerous binary: back down and suffer humiliation, or fire on foreign ships and trigger the very war it sought to avoid. Critics have rightly noted that a full economic blockade would impose severe costs on China and risk rapid escalation. But that critique applies to overt, comprehensive blockades — not to incremental quarantine behavior designed to generate commercial shutdown without a declaration of war.

What emerges from this approach is a theory of victory in which delay itself becomes decisive. Paralysis, in this sense, is not mere hesitation. It is the systematic slowing and fragmentation of political decision-making under conditions of uncertainty. It manifests as debate without resolution, signaling without commitment, and action deferred in hopes that circumstances will clarify on their own.

Paralysis here is not a tactic or a new domain of conflict. It is an outcome of successful coercion, one in which the strategic environment itself is reshaped so that decisive action becomes politically, economically, or morally harder over time. Victory does not come from spectacle or shock, but from altering what decision-makers believe is possible, legitimate, or worth the risk. A strategy built around paralysis does not seek immediate compliance. It seeks to stretch time, allowing pressure to accumulate faster than consensus can form.

Responding to this challenge does not require abandoning deterrence — it requires expanding it in ways that reflect how coercion actually unfolds. If paralysis is the intended outcome, then deterrence must account not only for catastrophic acts but for cumulative pressure designed to delay decisions and exploit ambiguity. Resilience and denial remain necessary, but they are insufficient on their own.

What changes most is the meaning of anticipatory alignment. It cannot simply denote consultation or shared concern — it must involve pre-agreed responses to specific categories of coercive action designed to remain below the threshold of war. For example, if China were to declare a law enforcement quarantine or maritime exclusion zone under the guise of safety or inspection, allied responses should not be improvised in real time. They should be pre-delegated, legally grounded, and automatic — ranging from coordinated maritime escort operations to synchronized economic and insurance guarantees — so that delay itself cannot be weaponized.

Such pre-commitment is not without cost. Automatic responses would constrain political discretion and surface alliance tensions over escalation and risk. But those costs are inseparable from the problem at hand: A strategy designed to win by delay can only be countered by accepting some loss of flexibility in exchange for denying the coercer time.

This shift reflects a deeper implication of the paralysis framework: Deterrence must target hesitation as much as action. If ambiguity and delay are the tools of coercion, then narrowing the space for prolonged uncertainty becomes a strategic objective in its own right. The question is no longer only what triggers escalation, but what forecloses stalling.

The question for the United States and its allies, then, is not simply whether they can defeat an invasion if it comes. It is whether they can prevent a slower defeat: one in which hesitation becomes habit, ambiguity becomes shelter, and delay becomes destiny. In such a contest, the absence of battle may not signal success. It may signal that paralysis has already begun.

J. William “BILL” DeMarco, D.Prof., is the Chief Academic Officer at Headquarters, LeMay Center, Air University where he is also an assistant professor. He is a retired U.S. Air Force colonel with five command tours spanning mobility, refueling, and joint operations. A former Hoover fellow at Stanford and research fellow at Cambridge University, he focuses on operational design, intrapreneurship, and leadership innovation in complex military systems.

 The views in this article are those of the author and not those of Air University, the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government.

Image: Philippine Coast Guard via Wikimedia Commons