China imports roughly 70–75% of its oil, nearly all by sea, through lanes that pass through or near the first island chain, and Taiwan sits at the dead centre of that arc. In any serious US–China confrontation, Washington’s highest-leverage play isn’t defending beaches; it’s interdicting those flows, and Taiwan under US alignment is the single most capable forward platform from which to do it. That’s the motive neither capital states plainly, Washington’s public case has to be democracy, Beijing’s has to be reunification, but both governments operate on the geography. Seen from Zhongnanhai, Taiwan’s current status isn’t a symbol; it’s a loaded gun pointed at the arteries that keep Chinese industry running. And that reframing cuts both ways: a power trying to eliminate a vulnerability is more predictable, and more deterrable, than one hunting for expansion, if the deterrence actually addresses the vulnerability.
The chip story, meanwhile, is decaying as a motive: SMIC’s 7nm progress and the 2023 Mate 60 Pro point to a China that needs TSMC less every year, which defines a closing risk window, not a permanent casus belli. And here’s the part almost nobody connects: Western sanctions since 2022 pushed Russian oil, grain and commodities onto overland routes into China, and every barrel that arrives by pipeline rather than past Malacca shrinks the leverage a blockade threat gives Washington. Ukraine policy has been quietly disarming one of the West’s main Taiwan deterrents. Stack that against the CSIS wargame finding that US long-range cruise missile stocks run dry within days of a realistic Taiwan fight, and 160km versus 8,150km of geography, and the question for this forum: if Taiwan’s value to Washington is primarily positional, how durable is the commitment once holding the position gets expensive?
Taiwan and the US doesn’t need to just stop crude oil getting to China. Ukraine has just shown the US that you can destroy energy networks with cheap drones deep in land. China will not only have the issue of importing oil, but their refineries could be targets too.
• Pre-war (early 2026 / 2025 average): Roughly 11.5–12.6 million barrels per day.
• June 2026: Hit a decade-low — around 6.2–7.1 million bpd (down ~40%+ year-on-year and roughly 40–50% below pre-conflict peaks in some estimates). Official customs data showed ~7.12 million bpd.
• July 2026 (preliminary): Expected to rise to about 7.8 million bpd (Kpler tracking). This is still well below normal. The uptick is mainly from previously stranded Middle East cargoes finally arriving plus increased Russian volumes.
China continues to lean on stockpiles, lower refinery runs, and demand softness rather than aggressively restocking.
Bottom line right now: China has not returned to anything close to normal import volumes. The deep cuts of spring/early summer are easing only slightly, and the Hormuz situation is still disrupted and fragile. Markets are watching closely whether China ramps purchases further or continues to run lean on inventories.
I think it ironically might have shown China that trying to control any shipping lanes is not easy. A blockade sounds simpler than its execution.
It seems to me a blockade on Taiwan would be a self imposed blockade on China as well. What we saw in the straight was that you don’t actually need to control the oceans or do anything much. Once you make a declaration this area is open to military action, ships don’t go. Insurance won’t underwrite or make it too expensive for ships to go.
You can’t really sell there is no increase risk to Chinese ports if you make it risky to even sail to the area.
And Japan. And South Korea. So if Beijing tries a stunt like that, they will be dealing with the entire neighbourhood, not just one-on-one which is of course what they would strongly prefer.
I was thinking of what happens if everyone else blockade the blockade. Idk if this is a real strategy or im just making it up. But why wouldn’t everyone else make a bigger blockade around Chinas blockade
ChewDawg’s OP ends with the question that actually matters: if Taiwan’s value to Washington is primarily positional, how durable is the commitment once holding the position gets expensive? A few threads above get at pieces of the answer.
Andrew0409’s point about insurance is the under-rated one, and it cuts both ways. You don’t need to control shipping to close a sea lane; you need to make it uninsurable. But that mechanism is indiscriminate. A Chinese-declared exclusion zone around Taiwan doesn’t just blockade Taiwan - it reprices every voyage to Japanese and South Korean ports in the same waters. Which is why afterspivak’s “they’d be dealing with the entire neighbourhood” is right, but with a harder edge: Beijing knows it too. A blockade that auto-escalates to Japan and Korea is a blockade China only declares when it’s already priced in a wider war. That’s an argument that the quarantine-lite option is less likely than the wargame scenarios assume - and that if it happens, it’s already the big one.
Mr_PBH’s import numbers point the same direction from the other side. China running at 6–7m bpd against a 11–12m pre-war average is a country stress-testing exactly the vulnerability the OP describes - stockpiles, lower refinery runs, Russian overland volume. Every month that continues, the Malacca leverage the whole blockade-platform argument rests on decays a little further. The deterrence asset is depreciating in real time.
The piece of the picture I almost never see discussed here is what this does to the third parties. Japan has made the commitment (Article 9 reinterpretation, defence doubling, counterstrike) but the capability isn’t operational yet - the gap between commitment and capability is the window of maximum Chinese incentive. South Korea’s position is worse: US forces pulled into a Taiwan fight is the largest reduction in Korean Peninsula deterrence since 1953, with Pyongyang now aligned with Moscow. Neither of those has a public answer because neither has a good one.
The full five-motive breakdown and the second-order effects analysis is in the essay the OP links - I’m the author, so flag that as an interest. Free to read, no paywall.
Agreed on all three - and “willing and able to spend” is the key, because the “able” part has and is changing.
For fifty years America’s ability to spend was structurally different from everyone else’s. Reserve currency status meant it could create the money the world was obliged to hold: every dollar in a foreign central bank was an interest-free loan to the US Treasury, and the inflation from deficit spending was largely exported rather than paid at home. Vietnam was the first stress test - the spending broke the gold anchor in 1971, and the system survived by shifting the bill to everyone holding dollars.
Ukraine is stress-testing the fiat version of the same system, and this time the anchor being broken is trust. Freezing $300B of Russian reserves in 2022 told every central bank that dollar assets are conditional. The dollar’s share of global reserves has slid from ~71% in 2001 to under 58%; Saudi–China oil now partly settles in yuan; settlement rails that bypass SWIFT entirely are being built. Every step of that means less of America’s spending gets absorbed abroad - and more of the inflation stays home, which is part of what the last few years’ prices have been telling us.
So the honest answer to “how much is America willing and able to spend” is: the credit card still works, but for the first time since 1971 the limit is becoming visible - and Ukraine policy is what made it visible. Vietnam on steroids, in slow motion.
The other thing worth flagging: the munitions shortfalls you mention aren’t a separate procurement story. Fifty years of running the tribute system hollowed out the industrial base that would be needed to defend it - the financial dominance and the empty magazines are the same phenomenon.
