Hellscape. That is the US military codename for the defence of Taiwan. Tens of thousands of autopilot kamikaze drones will first turn the skies black and then the land and seas blood-red, as they attack the largest fleet ever seen in history.
A flotilla of landing craft, huge as aircraft carriers and transporting two million Chinese troops across the 81 miles of the Taiwan Strait, will come under relentless attack from a locust swarm of flying bombs.
Though it might sound like a CGI spectacle from a Hollywood movie, the likelihood that the so-called ‘Million Man Swim’ will become a reality lurched ever closer last week when Chinese ships conducted unannounced ‘live-fire’ naval exercises in busy shipping lanes near Taiwan’s south-western coast.
This show of force came just weeks after the defence journal Naval News reported that five vast barges are under construction at Guangzhou shipyard in southern China.
Beijing sources claimed these are merely roll-on, roll-off ferries. However, military experts believe that they are amphibious assault barges since they have unusually long ‘road bridges’ – effectively mobile piers – attached to their bows.
The experts say they are designed to act as a bridge between the land and troop ships that follow them. Once a landing barge rams into the beach, a runway more than 120 yards long can be extended from it. At the aft end is an open platform which allows other ships to dock and unload on to it, turning it into portable road for disgorging troops, tanks and armoured vehicles.
Also under construction in China’s shipyards are the more fearsome amphibious Type 076 carriers, the first of which was unveiled in Shanghai last month – weighing 40,000 tons and almost 300 yards long.
Equipped with surface-to-air missile launchers and electromagnetic catapults to launch fighter jets, and capable of transporting at least 1,000 marines with helicopters, drones and landing craft, the Type 076 is self-evidently a warship.
The Chinese army take part in a live practice drill in Zhangzho province
Once completed, it will be the world’s largest amphibious assault ship with a flight deck spanning the area of three football fields and a ‘well deck’ in the aft from which amphibious craft can be launched.
Two days after the revelations in Naval News about the new assault barges, China began buzzing Taiwan with aircraft. Some 21 jets from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) entered Taiwanese airspace while six PLA navy vessels circled the island, according to the Ministry of National Defence in Taipei.
It all amounted to the most blatant statement of intent yet from China, which has long made clear its refusal to recognise Taiwan’s independence.
Defence expert and former Tory MP Dr Bob Seely, author of the newly published book Total War, warns: ‘For those who think the Chinese are bluffing, this evidence is counting against them.
‘China’s president Xi Jinping says he wants to be in a position to invade by 2027. And as we found out with Russia and Vladimir Putin, when dictators line up an invasion, it is not merely acting tough. We need to expect the worst, because Xi has untrammelled power and he is arming for war.’
A Taiwan free from dictatorial rule by China is crucial to the West for several reasons, but the most vital can be summed up in a single word: semiconductors.
Semiconductor materials form the basis of computer chips. Without them, no electronic device can be manufactured. And at least two-thirds of the world’s high quality semiconductor chip manufacturing takes place in Taiwan.
That figure, according to US congressman Michael McCaul who was foreign affairs chairman under President Biden, could in reality be as high as 90 per cent.
‘Everybody who has a phone or a car, as well as our advanced weapons systems, is dependent on semiconductors and on Taiwan,’ McCaul warned last year. Just how dependent, we will find out following a Chinese invasion. McCaul has been one of the lone voices, urging the world to see Taiwan’s vulnerability.
‘This island doesn’t have the capacity to defend itself,’ the Texan said last year. ‘I just don’t see how it survives. And then what are we gonna do?’
The US is trying to ramp up its semiconductor chip production, but current projections suggest it won’t be anywhere close to self-sufficiency before the end of this decade – another reason why Beijing could order the invasion sooner rather than later.
And, when it comes, a secondary effect will devastate Britain. The Taiwan Strait is a key shipping route, with nearly half the world’s ships passing through it every year, to and from the global manufacturing powerhouses of South Korea, Japan and, of course, China itself.
With the closure of shipping lanes around Taiwan, our supply chains will be cut. Many of our basic imports – cars, machine parts, clothes, even food – will cease.
Taiwanese soldiers with machine guns train during an Army Preparedness Enhancement Drill ahead of the Chinese New Year, amid escalating Chinese tensions to the island
Our precarious ‘just-in-time’ economy, where we are never more than a day or two from running out of essentials, will disintegrate.
Dr Seely warns: ‘Britain will face an impossible choice. Either we stand with America and condemn the invasion, or we try to maintain a trading alliance with China – which will mean the end of our Special Relationship with the US forever.Â
Both options are disastrous. Alienate America and we are all but defenceless against Russia and other enemies. Alienate China and our economy could collapse, leading to real social disruption and rioting, and spiralling national debt.
‘The shock of a Taiwan war will be much greater than the shock of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.’ The obliteration of Britain’s economy is a mere bonus for Beijing, compared to Taiwan’s geographical significance.
For China, an independent Taiwan impedes access to the South Pacific, because it sits in the middle of a chain of islands and peninsulas friendly to the U.S. – from South Korea, to Okinawa south of Japan, on through Taiwan to the Philippines archipelago, and all the way down to Australia.
China has repeatedly warned that it cannot allow its only coastline to be encircled by the Americans in this way. By occupying Taiwan, they could punch a hole in that perimeter.
Optimists suggest they might hold off till 2030, to give the U.S. a chance to bolster their semi-conductor device production and so avert global war.
But in an unstable world, optimism is a fool’s refuge. China’s aggressive shipbuilding strategy and provocative incursions into Taiwan shipping lanes and airspace point to an imminent invasion, and the sooner it happens, the less prepared this tiny, heavily populated island will be.
But despite the imbalance of power and the fact that the U.S. has signed no official guarantee to protect Taiwan from invasion, a military takeover would be hugely risky. Easy victory is far from guaranteed for China, despite its tenfold superiority in ground forces.
China could send up to two million troops to impose martial law. But first they have to cross the Taiwan Strait, one of the most heavily defended stretches of water in the world, and then take control of an island ringed with mountains.
Here, we envisage how the invasion could play out – as well as its horrendous consequences for the world:
Invasion in July 2026
For 18 months the Chinese preparations for invasion have been in plain sight, yet the prevailing view in Taiwan is that it is impossible for multiple reasons – geographic, strategic and economic.
China’s president Xi Jinping says he wants to be in a position to invade Taiwan by 2027
The island’s president Lai Ching-te, a former doctor also known as William Lai, has been unable to galvanise the population of 23 million despite the gradual massing of Chinese troops and transport ships on the opposite coastline.
In London and Washington, the assumption is that Beijing is preparing a show of strength to coincide with the centenary of the PLA the following year.
Dismissing the threats, President Donald Trump’s chief military advisers believe that China’s armed forces are largely untested and too reliant on old technology. They are no match for US air power in the South China Sea.
Crucially, both Taiwan and America are confident that there are only a few places on the mountainous island where an invasion force could attempt a landing.
The Taiwanese compare their island to a porcupine, bristling with jagged mountains and missile silos. Any attacker will be impaled on its spiny defences.
When the first attack comes, no one is prepared.
July 20, 2026
3am local time: The initial assault coincides with the annual ocean monsoons. In the darkness of the early hours, 20,000 Chinese shock troops board ‘mobile-pier’ landing craft and Type 075 amphibious assault ships – precursor to the new Type 076 – before launching into the rain-lashed seas.
Low visibility and electronic interference aimed at Taiwan’s radar stations mean it’s well after dawn before the fleet is spotted. By then, it is almost halfway across the straits.
5.30am: A blizzard of unmanned defensive kamikaze drones is launched from the clusters of tiny islands along Taiwan’s east coast. At first, PLA jamming devices transmit a wall of electro-noise, causing many of the drones to stutter, stall, dip into the sea or smash into each other. Some hit their targets, but do little damage to the sea-going behemoths with their reinforced armour plating.
But as the defensive response intensifies, two of the Type 75s are crippled. Explosions tear them apart, with hundreds of men leaping from the blazing decks to drown in the churning seas below.
6am: Taiwan has 14 beaches that are vulnerable to invasion and, as the barges fan out and the Type 075s ready landing craft and helicopters full of troops, it appears the Chinese are aiming to take all of them.
President Lai orders the country’s 190,000 servicemen and women to action stations, and gives orders that all 260,000 of its reservists report for immediate duty. But even as the call goes out, waves of Chinese Xi’an H-6 bombers are taking off.
7am: The planned Chinese landing zones, such as Linkou Beach near Taipei, are under massive bombardment. All are heavily reinforced and ringed by concrete blockades, but an avalanche of bunker-busting bombs are reducing these Taiwanese defences to rubble – and killing Taipei’s soldiers in uncounted numbers.
Donald Trump calls President Xi, demanding a halt to the invasion. ‘You are too late,’ Xi tells him. ‘It is already over.’ And though the statement is not literally true, the first marines are preparing to storm the beachheads as he speaks.
9am: Taiwan reveals it has far better defences than Beijing anticipated. Crucially, it has submarine drones that cripple several of the ‘mobile pier’ barges and Type 075s, leaving them floundering without power and vulnerable to rocket attacks as well as drone bombs.
Despite the bunker busters, the island’s defenders also have a concentration of firepower on its vulnerable beaches that far exceeds anything seen at the D-Day invasion during World War II.
The horrendous human losses only encourage China to accelerate its attack, pouring hundreds of thousands of troops onto the beaches and beyond.
By sheer weight of numbers, more beachheads are established, but they are subject to eviscerating fire. Taiwan is already running low on ammunition and pleads to its allies for help.
11am: In heavy fighting, Chinese marines have overrun three of the beaches, including Linkou, and are racing into the built-up areas. Urban resistance is sporadic, with most people either hiding indoors or trying to flee the city.
Those seeking sanctuary in the wooded heights of Mount Guanyin are able to look down on the Strait and see hundreds of Chinese ships in the relentless rainstorms.
Two brand new Type 076 carriers are brought into action, sending helicopters full of troops over the jagged mountains of Taiwan. Every ferry and container ship has been pressed into China’s military service.
For the past nine years, Beijing has imposed a strict policy that all public transport and shipping will be available to the armed forces at all times, and must be suitably equipped. The rationale behind this law is now brutally apparent. During the course of this day, 750,000 Chinese soldiers will be ferried to the frontline.
12.15pm: A vast fleet of Chinese destroyers, frigates and cruisers now surrounds Taiwan. All the island’s airfields have been obliterated in missile strikes, giving China total air supremacy. Any Taiwanese fighter jets that are airborne are picked off by squadrons of enemy planes.
1pm: It’s dawn in London and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has spent a futile, sleepless night tracking news of the invasion, voices Britain’s official disapproval. This is duly noted, and ignored by the Chinese. So much for all his sucking up to Beijing.
2.35pm: Chinese troops storm the Taipei presidential offices. An announcement is broadcast, declaring that surrender has been officially imposed. Taiwan’s leaders, their army and millions of citizens refuse to recognise it.
The US has not ruled out military action but so far is confining itself to demands of safe conduct for Taiwan’s politicians, journalists and leading businessmen, who are under mass arrest.
4.30pm: In the Great Hall of the People, off Tiananmen Square in Beijing, President Xi announces to rapturous applause that Taiwan has been reclaimed for China.
He does not say that this will be his enduring legacy but, for many years, it has been an open secret that he believes he was destined to lead this invasion.
4.47pm: America is holding back, citing the lack of any official treaty pledging military aid to Taiwan. Britain, which has the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth in the South China Seas, also refrains from opening fire. But Japan does not.
Tokyo, terrified of losing its semiconductor supply and with it the whole of its electronics industry, offers support to Prime Minister Lei and his beleaguered forces.
A hastily assembled task force sets sail from Yokosuka Naval Base. Enraged at the intervention, and desperate to deter Taiwan’s potential allies, President Xi orders the PLA airforce to warn off Japan’s warships.
7pm: In the ensuing encounter, two Chinese planes are shot down. China retaliates with a missile attack on the ships, sinking one. The invasion of Taiwan has now become full-blown war between Japan and China.
July 21
5am: (Confusingly, in Washington DC, it’s 4pm on July 20). Under its treaty obligations to Japan, the US has no choice, but to give military aid. Donald Trump orders the US Pacific Fleet to launch a missile attack on Chinese transport ships in the Taiwan Strait.
7am: China responds with a hypersonic missile attack on the US fleet, badly damaging one Constellation class frigate defending the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. Trump orders a second, much heavier bombardment of the Chinese troop ships, with air raids on supply depots on the Chinese mainland.
11am: President Xi summons the US ambassador in Beijing and informs him that, unless America immediately withdraws its Navy, another hypersonic missile will be unleashed on the Pacific Fleet – and this one will be armed with a tactical nuclear warhead, set to explode above the American ships.
11.05am: Trump yells down the phone at Xi that, if China uses a nuclear weapon, Beijing will be ‘a radioactive hole in the ground’.
3.03pm: Hellscape engulfs the entire world.
