Sea Transportation: August 14, 2005

Archives

Taiwan recently ran a large scale training exercise off two of its major ports; Tsoying and Kaohsiung. The exercise assumed that China was going to use submarines and aircraft to shut down the ports, cripple the economy and force the government to surrender. Taiwanese air and naval forces searched for submarines, and ran mock air battles overhead. Taiwan fears that China might try to force it to surrender its independence by attempting to shut off sea access to the island country. This wouldnt be hard to do, because shipping companies would stay away from Taiwan if China just declared an embargo. At that point, the rates for insurance carried by merchant ships would skyrocket. This would force Taiwan to pay much more for shipping costs, thus making their products less competitive, or surrender to China. A third option is to do the same to several major Chinese ports. This would apply the same economic pressure to China, which, for political reasons, might be less able to withstand a naval blockade than Taiwan.

 

X

ad

Help Keep Us From Drying Up

We need your help! Our subscription base has slowly been dwindling.

Each month we count on your contributions. You can support us in the following ways:

  1. Make sure you spread the word about us. Two ways to do that are to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
  2. Subscribe to our daily newsletter. We’ll send the news to your email box, and you don’t have to come to the site unless you want to read columns or see photos.
  3. You can contribute to the health of StrategyPage.
Subscribe   Contribute   Close