Can Taiwan defend itself from Chinese invasion?

Can Taiwan defend itself from a Chinese invasion? On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer sits down with Bonny Lin, director of the China Power Project at CSIS, to break down Beijing’s increasingly aggressive military maneuvers around the island and what it means for Taipei’s future. Since Taiwan’s pro-independence president William Lai took office in 2024, China has stepped up both the frequency and scale of its military operations, with daily air and naval incursions into Taiwan’s air defense zone.

It’s an alarming escalation, making the possibility of armed conflict feel closer than ever. China has made clear it’s deadly serious about using military force if it needs to: the People’s Liberation Army recently unveiled two mobile bridges that could be used for an amphibious invasion and is reportedly building a massive underground military facility near Beijing 10x the size of the Pentagon. But despite this pressure, Taiwan’s geographic separation gives it a strategic edge.

“Regardless of how capable you assess the Chinese military,” Lin says, “A Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan would be the most complex military operation we’ve seen in history, more complex than the Normandy invasion.”