A CCP Takeover of Taiwan Would Threaten US Security, Experts Say

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Nov 25, 2025 - 10:54 Updated: Nov 25, 2025 - 01:55
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A CCP Takeover of Taiwan Would Threaten US Security, Experts Say

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A Chinese Communist Party (CCP) takeover of Taiwan would have serious geopolitical and economic consequences for the United States, three China experts told senators at a congressional hearing on Nov. 20.

The hearing, hosted by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, looked into the state of U.S.–Taiwan cooperation since the Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act was signed into law as part of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.

“From a security perspective, the loss of Taiwan, as this quote, ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier,’ would be completely irreversible. We would lose our ability to access the first island chain and the rest of the region. We would obviously lose a close, vibrant democratic partner,” said Lauren Dickey, senior associate to the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, quoting the late General Douglas MacArthur’s description of Taiwan during the Korean War, when MacArthur argued strongly for the island’s strategic value in containing communist expansion.

Dickey previously served as a senior adviser for Taiwan policy at the U.S. Department of Defense.

When asked whether Chinese leader Xi Jinping would “stop there” if the Chinese regime launches an invasion against Taiwan, Dickey responded, “My belief is no.”

The Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act, formerly known as the Taiwan Policy Act, was introduced in the Senate in June 2022, just days after China’s defense minister vowed that Beijing would “not hesitate to start a war” against Taiwan and to “smash to smithereens” any effort to maintain Taiwan as an independent nation.

A key provision of the law provides Taiwan with $2 billion in loans and another $2 billion in grants each year through fiscal year 2027 to help fund weapons purchases.

The economic impact would be enormous, Rush Doshi, director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the cost of a Chinese attack on Taiwan would be 10 percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP), amounting to a second Great Depression.

Geopolitically, the war’s fallout could leave Asia “no longer favorably inclined towards the United States,” Doshi said, effectively making the region “no longer accessible” to Washington.

“We’re locked out of Asia where Asian states bandwagon with China,” Doshi said.

Once Asian countries choose to work with China, Doshi added, the United States would face greater challenges rebuilding its manufacturing capabilities without Asian investments.

Earlier this month, South Korea announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States to make $350 billion in strategic investments in various U.S. industries.

In October, Japan pledged to invest $490 billion in the United States, as part of new security and trade pacts between Tokyo and Washington.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, is investing $65 billion to build three semiconductor fabrication plants in Arizona. The Taiwan-based semiconductor giant announced an additional $100 billion investment in March.

Should China be able to deny U.S. access to TSMC, the impact would be “catastrophic” for the United States, Doshi said, particularly since the semiconductor company is making many semiconductor chips with artificial intelligence (AI) applications for companies such as Nvidia.

“Virtually every single Nvidia chip of significance is made in Taiwan,” Doshi said.

If the CCP took over Taiwan, “it would mean that our entire AI future is in the hands of Beijing,” he added.

“If we lost that, we would probably lose the 21st century,” Doshi said.

Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said that the use of force has not been a central element of Beijing’s foreign policy. However, this would change if the CCP were to seize Taiwan militarily, she said.

“I believe that if they actually took Taiwan by force successfully, that consideration of use of force would become much more central in PRC foreign policy—whether we’re talking about against Japan, South China Sea, against some of the claimants, or potentially against India—and, as their capabilities continue to improve much, much farther from their shores,” Glaser said, using the acronym of China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.

The U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission warned in a report released earlier this month that the Chinese military has enhanced its capabilities to “blockade or launch an invasion of Taiwan with little warning.”

The CCP is “rapidly advancing toward its goal of being prepared to take Taiwan by force,” the report states.

Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Taiwan “won’t be the last stop” of the Chinese regime’s aggression.

“Make no mistake: China is the greatest long-term threat to American interests. If we allow China’s blatant aggression against Taiwan to go unchecked, that will have ripple effects on our Indo-Pacific alliances and seriously hurt our ability to compete with China globally,” Risch said.

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