Chinese exercises around Taiwan invasion 'rehearsals': U.S. commander

New York, May 20 (CNA) The head of the United States Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, has warned that on-and-off Chinese military exercises around Taiwan are not drills but "rehearsals" for a potential invasion and that China is on "a dangerous course."

A Wall Street Journal article published Tuesday reported on a recent event in Hawaii "attended by the U.S. and more than two dozen allies to sharpen their ability to jointly fight against Beijing."

One of the speakers was Paparo, a four-star admiral who oversees U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific, who laid out a scenario of how to counter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan after warning that "China is on a dangerous course" and that its large-scale drills around Taiwan were "rehearsals, not exercises," the WSJ reported.

He said the key to an initial stage of a U.S.-Sino showdown over Taiwan would be "to neutralize China's radar sites, missile launchers and command centers that hold off the U.S. and its allies," according to the WSJ.

China has several types of antiship missiles, a sizable lead in advanced hypersonic weaponry and edge in its proximity to Taiwan, but the addition of U.S. precision-strike missiles that can sink ships is a "gamechanger" that "alters China's risk calculus," Paparo was cited as saying by the WSJ.

"So too do a pair of agile forces working closely with U.S. allies near Taiwan that can hit Chinese targets from land, collect valuable battlespace information and create openings for U.S. air and naval forces to maneuver," the WSJ said.

Paparo is known for coining the term "Hellscape" strategy to defend a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in the Taiwan Strait.

He first used the term during a conference in June 2024 and reiterated it during a U.S. congressional hearing in Washington in April 2025.

The strategy is that as soon as Chinese forces begin moving across the waterway separating China and Taiwan, allied forces would deploy numerous unmanned submarines, unmanned surface ships and aerial drones to prevent the advancement of PLA troops.

China has conducted more extensive military drills, including in areas surrounding Taiwan, since its response to then U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in in early August 2022.

The most recent large-scale exercises were the two-day "Strait Thunder-2025A" drill last month in parts of the Taiwan Strait conducted by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Eastern Theater Command.

These exercises were to serve as "a stern warning" to "Taiwan independence" separatist forces, according to China's Taiwan Affairs Office.

Also Tuesday, Republican Congressman Zach Nunn posted on X (known formerly as Twitter) a clip of an interview he did with Falun Gong-affiliated New Tang Dynasty Television on his recent discussion with Paparo on what the U.S. would do should China decide to invade Taiwan.

Nunn said in his interview that given that 90 percent of the world's advanced semiconductors are produced in Taiwan, a decision by China to embargo, blockage or outright invade Taiwan could result in "economic destruction that would rot over the entire world."

"We're talking about things we haven't seen since World War Two, economic GDP collapses. No one wants to see this happen, including the American people, or candidly, the Chinese people," Nunn said.

"So we need to have a real world assessment of what needs to happen," he said.

During his recent meeting with Paparo, Nunn said he was told that Washington has a "minute by minute approach to how to deter, how to stop and how to respond if a Chinese incursion was made in a military sense, upon the island of Taiwan," but Nunn offered no other details.