This article originally appeared in the Japan Times.
By Stephen Nagy, January 7, 2026
The predawn operation that removed longtime Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from power in Caracas this past weekend sent shockwaves through capitals worldwide.
Within hours, foreign-policy analysts began asking: Does U.S. President Donald Trump’s Venezuelan gambit signal U.S. tolerance for forcible regime change that Beijing might interpret as precedent for “reunifying” Taiwan?
The answer is, it’s complicated. Understanding why requires grappling with fundamental asymmetries that make Venezuela a calculated risk and Taiwan an existential wager China cannot afford to lose.
Viewed dispassionately, the Venezuela playbook doesn’t travel. What worked in Caracas — a precision strike against an isolated regime with minimal global economic integration — would be catastrophic if applied to the Taiwan Strait. The economic interdependencies alone tell the story. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Jude Blanchette and Gerard DiPippo’s astute analysis on forced unification with Taiwan has made clear, even a “successful” Chinese invasion would trigger a Pyrrhic victory of historic proportions.
Consider the immediate carnage. China’s three provinces nearest Taiwan — Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang — account for 22% of Chinese gross domestic product and 17% of its population. The U.S. think-tank RAND estimates a year-long conflict would reduce China’s GDP by 25% to 35%, compared to 5% to 10% for the United States. But these figures predate full accounting for supply-chain disruptions, sanctions or infrastructure damage.
Shipping disruption alone would dwarf anything since World War II. Six of China’s largest ports lie within the conflict zone. Nearly half the global container fleet transits the Taiwan Strait. Complete disruption of Chinese trade would erase $2.6 trillion from global GDP — 3% of world output — before second-order effects. This exceeds France’s entire economic output.
Taiwan’s semiconductor dominance amplifies costs exponentially. Taiwan produces 60% of global semiconductors and nearly 90% of advanced chips. Taiwanese tech giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. creates what economists call a “single point of failure” in global technology supply chains. Maduro’s removal disrupts oil markets; Taiwan’s neutralization would simultaneously halt production of consumer electronics, automobiles, medical devices and defense systems across every advanced economy. Bloomberg Economics estimates first-year losses at $5 trillion.
International economics aside, China’s political system cannot absorb the domestic uncertainty that military adventurism would unleash. The Chinese Communist Party has spent five decades rebuilding national strength after the “century of humiliation” and Maoist chaos. Party legitimacy rests on three pillars: economic growth, political stability and predictable governance. A Taiwan contingency would shatter all three simultaneously.
China’s current malaise — property collapse, youth unemployment exceeding 20%, deflationary pressures — hardly cushions wartime disruption. Deloitte’s 4.5% Chinese growth projection for 2026 assumes continued Western trade. Remove that assumption and you’re modeling depression.
The OECD’s June 2025 outlook projects global growth at 2.9% for 2025-2026, with China’s contribution falling from 5.0% to 4.3%. These baseline figures incorporate no conflict. China’s November 2025 data reveals fragility: Retail sales grew just 1.3% year-over-year, the weakest since December 2022. Fixed asset investment fell 2.6% and private investment was down 5.3%. These numbers reflect an economy struggling with confidence. A Venezuela-style military shock would transform caution into paralysis.
As Oriana Skylar Mastro and Brandon Yoder note in their May 2025 Foreign Affairs article “The Taiwan Tightrope,” Chinese leaders would only contemplate invasion “if China could take the island before U.S. forces could intervene.” This narrow window reflects constraint, not confidence. Beijing has achieved specific capabilities for limited war through “targeted investments intended to give it an advantage in a quick, limited war.” The operative word is “quick.” Ask Russian President Vladimir Putin after his “quick” invasion of Ukraine has metastasized into a bloody and costly four-year war. Extended conflict introduces systemic uncertainty that CCP legitimacy cannot withstand.
Paradoxically, Venezuela may strengthen deterrence by demonstrating Trump’s unconventional use of American power. Chinese leader Xi Jinping learned during Trump’s first term about U.S. Tomahawk strikes on Syria while being served chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago. Trump has deployed military power against Iran, the Houthis and now Venezuela with clandestine precision.
But Venezuela succeeded because it was surgically precise, geographically contained and risked no great-power escalation. None of these conditions pertain in Taiwan.
A 2024 University of Sydney’s U.S. Studies Centre simulation revealed dangerous allied hesitation on economic warfare against China — gaps Beijing will probe. Team Australia initially resisted Taiwan Strait exercises, only agreeing to “impose high economic costs on China” after escalation. This allied caution would evaporate if China attacked, but illustrates Trump cannot assume automatic support as with Venezuela.
As documented in economist Joris Teer’s June 2024 presentation for Japan’s Research Institute for Economy, Trade and Industry, the geopolitical breaking points from Ukraine would magnify catastrophically in Taiwan. Europe’s Russian energy dependence cost the European Union $1 trillion in 2022. Taiwan’s technology centrality would dwarf that impact.
Taiwan itself remains dangerously unprepared. As political scientists Takashi Hosoda and Nuno Morgado wrote last May in the Asian International Studies Review, there are critical gaps in Taiwan’s power and resilience capabilities, with energy self-sufficiency at 2.7% and LNG reserves covering just 11 days — far below South Korea or Japan. Moreover, Taiwan’s food self-sufficiency declined from 56.1% in 1985 to 30.7% in 2022. Tellingly, only 13% of Taiwanese-owned vessels fly Taiwanese flags.
These vulnerabilities reflect what Hosoda and Morgado identify as political failure: Taiwan’s leaders haven’t designed resilience measures “for the worst-case scenario of a complete blockade.” Democratic leaders hesitate to alarm voters with doomsday preparations.
This is where Taiwan’s friends bear responsibility. As Yasuhide Nakayama, Japan’s former State Minister of Defense and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, recently wrote in Ameblo, “defending freedom and democracy requires cost and resolve.” Japan, Australia and European powers must move beyond rhetoric to concrete measures: stockpiling resources, pre-positioning relief, hardening energy infrastructure and treating Taiwan’s security as “an international public good.”
In their Foreign Affairs articles, Mastro and Yoder outline the deterrence paradox: “Do too little, and Beijing may gamble it can seize Taiwan before Washington responds. Do too much, and Chinese leaders may conclude force is the only remaining path.” Threading this needle requires “calibrated rearmament, reassurance and restraint.”
Venezuela complicates this calibration. By demonstrating Trump’s risk tolerance, it may embolden some in Beijing while terrifying others. The net effect strengthens deterrence if American unpredictability couples with credible allied resolve and Taiwanese resilience.
But the deepest reason Venezuela doesn’t template Taiwan is Beijing’s own historical memory. Chinese strategic culture remains haunted by the century of humiliation and CCP legitimacy stems from having restored Chinese greatness. A failed or costly Taiwan adventure would resurrect those ghosts under circumstances where President Xi has staked personal authority on “great rejuvenation.”
This isn’t Venezuela’s risk calculus, where regime change triggers regional instability but wouldn’t threaten global architecture. For Beijing, Taiwan represents all-or-nothing: “winning” militarily could still mean losing if China emerges isolated and crippled. As Blanchette and DiPippo warn, even if unification is successful, “China would have gained Taiwan but sacrificed its larger ambition of becoming a global superpower.”
For a Chinese Communist Party measuring success in dynastic timescales — Xi often invokes “two centenary goals” — trading global superpower trajectory for Taiwan would be historical malpractice. In other words, some prizes cost more than they’re worth. Taiwan is that prize. If the century of humiliation taught China anything, it’s that national rejuvenation cannot be built on economic collapse and international isolation.
Stephen R. Nagy is professor of politics and international studies at the International Christian University. Concurrently, he holds appointments as a senior fellow and China project lead at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a visiting fellow at the Japan Institute for International Affairs. The title of his forthcoming book is “Japan as a Middle Power State: Navigating Ideological and Systemic Divides.”
