The UK government is currently rehearsing an economic response to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a report on Wednesday has claimed.
Government officials in Britain are reportedly wargaming the country’s economic response to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a report published by The Guardian has claimed.
Fears over the possibility of such an invasion have dramatically increased over the last few years, with both the war in Ukraine and the recent Chinese spy balloon scandal prompting some officials in the West to become more concerned about possible aggressive military action on the part of the Chinese Communist Party.
According to the report officials in Whitehall have now begun considering the UK’s economic strategy should war break out, with the country now said to be wargaming multiple scenarios involving an aggressive war by China against Taiwan, a major concern given the dependence of the west on so many manufactured items made in Taiwan.
One source has reportedly admitted to The Guardian that such an invasion would represent a vastly different challenge than the war in Ukraine, with the fact that the world’s supply of electronics and microchips are so intimately tied up with the two nations posing certain challenges for Westminster.
“It’s no secret that the supply chain problems would be greater, but just because it’s complicated that doesn’t mean it’s impossible,” the source remarked, adding that the UK would have to ” think in a different way” compared to its response to the conflict in Ukraine.
Officials are also said to have stressed to the publication that the preparations were purely precautionary, and that a potential invasion of Taiwan was just one of many so-called “black swan” events that the UK government makes preparations for.
Such a claim will likely not be all that assuring to many members of the general public, with tensions between the West and China growing substantially over the last number of weeks amid claims that the Communist nation has been deploying spy balloons over North America.
Some officials are also worried about how the West’s involvement in the Ukrainian conflict could shape relations with China, with one think-tank warning that the failure on the part of many pro-Ukrainian nations to replace weapons it sends to the Eastern European country mend up emboldening President Xi Jinping’s regime.
“The United States has been slow to replenish its arsenal, and the DoD has only placed on contract a fraction of the weapons it has sent to Ukraine,” Senior Vice President Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies reportedly remarked last month.
“Effective deterrence hinges, in part, on having sufficient stockpiles of munitions and other weapons systems. These challenges are not new,” he continued. “What is different now, however, is that the United States is directly aiding Ukraine in an industrial-style conventional war with Russia — the largest land war in Europe since World War II — and tensions are rising between China and the United States in the Indo-Pacific.”
Meanwhile, the UK has seen an increasing hawkishness towards China, with former Prime Minister Liz Truss expected to give a speech in Japan this week that will push for her successor, Rishi Sunak, to take a more confrontational approach towards Beijing.
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