According to a report published last Wednesday titled Troubled Straits: Analyzing Trade Chokepoints in the South China Sea, if a conflict were to disrupt traffic passing through the Taiwan Strait, China would have to transport certain goods by land, which would come at a heavy cost for Beijing and have a huge impact on regional economies.
The analysis by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies states that China would face massive economic costs if it were to blockade Taiwan.
“A conflict emerging around Taiwan represents the most severe threat to the region’s trade,” the authors of the report highlighted.
In 2024, 33% of China’s total imports and 58% of its maritime imports passed through the Taiwan Strait, the report states, making it crucial for its own economic survival.
“A military action by China that disrupts traffic in the Taiwan Strait could damage China’s economy even more severely than a potential disruption of traffic in the Strait of Malacca,” the author states.
Most of the raw materials that are not available to China—such as oil, coal, natural gas, metals —reach the country through the Taiwan Strait.
The Taiwan Strait is also a vital route for China’s own domestic shipping. The Asian power relies on the strait to transport goods produced in southern technological hubs like Shenzhen and Guangzhou to eastern cities such as Shanghai and Ningbo. China could transport these goods by land but according to the report, transporting goods from Guangzhou to Tianjin this way “could cost approximately three times as much as transporting the same goods by sea.”
