The Strait of Hormuz remains a pivotal flashpoint in the U.S.-Iran conflict — an ace card that Tehran repeatedly plays to hedge against American power. At the recent Group of Seven summit in France, President Donald Trump praised Chinese President Xi Jinping for remaining “neutral” during a peak in U.S.-Iran tensions, suggesting that Beijing showed immense restraint by not sending warships to the Persian Gulf to secure its own energy flows.
While this observation mischaracterizes Beijing’s actual strategic calculations, it inadvertently mirrors the exact countermeasures the United States and its allies might deploy against a possible Chinese blockade of the Taiwan Strait. However, the strategic objectives differ fundamentally: while Iran’s Hormuz strategy aims to hijack global oil traffic, a Chinese blockade of the Taiwan Strait would be part of a highly sophisticated, multi-domain stranglehold designed to force the island’s total surrender.
Theoretically, China possesses the capability to launch a bloodless, “no-bullet” blockade to suffocate Taiwan into submission without immediately triggering a hot war. This gray-zone strategy exploits a critical asymmetric pressure point: the ticking clock of Taiwan’s domestic resources. As an isolated island nation, Taiwan relies almost entirely on imported energy. Crucially, it maintains less than an eight-day emergency supply of Liquefied Natural Gas alongside highly restricted coal reserves.
Under the guise of a domestic customs enforcement action, Beijing could deploy the China Coast Guard and its sprawling Maritime Militia to turn away commercial LNG tankers using non-kinetic means, such as pervasive electronic jamming, laser dazzling, and physical crowding. By weaponizing administrative delays, Beijing could simply wait. Within a single week, Taiwan’s power grid would face catastrophic rolling blackouts, paralyzing its infrastructure and economy without a single missile being fired.
Yet, executing a bloodless siege around Taiwan is far easier in theory than in practice. Should China attempt this maneuver, it will most likely confront three formidable, overlapping countermeasures from Taiwan and its core allies: the U.S., Japan, and Australia.
First, the allied coalition can actively move to shatter the gray-zone blockade through non-kinetic resupply. The U.S. Navy and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force would likely establish sovereign naval escorts for merchant convoys. These heavily armed surface combatants would effectively dare the China Coast Guard to ram or board a vessel sailing under the protective guns of an American destroyer or a Japanese Aegis cruiser. To maintain the blockade, Beijing would be forced to fire the first shot, instantly subverting its gray-zone approach.
Second, the allies can exploit the unique geography of the Okinawan and Philippine gateways to open a corridor from the east. While the Taiwan Strait itself is a narrow, heavily contested channel, the waters east of the island face the open Pacific. Japan has heavily fortified its southwestern Ryukyu islands, creating a formidable defensive perimeter that ensures an alternative maritime corridor remains open for incoming resupply ships.
Beneath the waves, the American Virginia-class and Japanese Taigei-class attack submarines would hunt and deter Chinese military submarines attempting to covertly seal off these deep waters, establishing a secure underwater sanctuary for allied shipping.
The third, and perhaps most potent, countermeasure does not take place near Taiwan at all. It occurs thousands of miles away. This is the “Malacca Trap” — China’s acute vulnerability due to its reliance on the Strait of Malacca, a narrow waterway connecting the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea that carries up to 80% of China’s crude oil imports.
While China attempts to strangle Taiwan, a U.S.-led international coalition could enforce a mirrored, distant naval blockade at the Malacca, Lombok, and Sunda straits. Such an allied embargo would instantly cut off Beijing’s economic lifeblood, threatening the internal stability of the ruling regime and forcing its retreat to avoid domestic collapse.
This reality presents Beijing with a definitive strategic paradox: if a “no-bullet” blockade is bound to fail — either by escalating into a catastrophic regional war that decimates China’s wealthy, industrialized southeast coast, or by forcing a humiliating retreat that erodes the regime’s domestic legitimacy — then why start it at all?
AMERICA NEEDS A TAIWAN ENVOY BEFORE BEIJING TURNS FORMOSA STRAIT INTO HORMUZ 2.0
Yet because Taiwan remains entirely dependent on external energy, and because Beijing possesses the unique capability to project overwhelming naval power around the island, the temptation to utilize this leverage remains dangerously high.
The bottom line: such a gray-zone blockade presents the international community with a horrific binary choice: accept a global economic depression or risk a massive, potentially nuclear military escalation. In this sense, the Strait of Hormuz serves as a grim warning for the Taiwan Strait. Preservation of peace hinges entirely on the strength of allied deterrence; the world must prepare resolutely for the worst, precisely so it can preserve the best.
David W. Wang is a senior international business executive, geopolitical affairs consultant, analyst, and writer based in the Washington, D.C., metro area. David can be reached on X @DavidWWang203.