A new cruise missile could allow Taiwan to strike targets a thousand miles away.
If Beijing pulls the trigger and sends its forces streaming across the Taiwan Strait, the war could end quickly. Chinese rockets could pummel Taiwanese forces into submission, clearing the way for tens of thousands of Chinese marines to rush ashore on the plains of southwestern Taiwan.
That’s the best-case scenario for China. The worst-case scenario is that the invasion gets hung up on Taiwan’s fortified island of Penghu, the U. S. Navy sends in two or three aircraft carrier battle groups and the war drags out for many bloody weeks.
If that happens, Taiwan could do more than merely defend its islands and beaches. It could strike back at China with a growing arsenal of long-range, supersonic cruise missiles that could reach as far inland as Beijing.
There was a time, not long ago, when Taiwan’s armed forces were both more sophisticated than China’s and, in key categories such as missile-armed warships, more numerous.
This despite China’s billion-plus people hugely outnumbering Taiwan’s own 20 million people.
Chinese reforms in the late 1990s and early 2000s opened up the country’s economy. Two decades of explosive growth fueled a rapid modernization of the Chinese military. In 2020 the People’s Liberation Army possesses more and better ships, planes and vehicles than the Taiwanese military possesses.
