Karishma Vaswani, Columnist

The World Isn’t Ready for a Taiwan Strait Shock

April 15, 2026 at 8:00 PM UTC

Karishma Vaswani is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia politics with a special focus on China. Previously, she was the BBC's lead Asia presenter and worked for the BBC across Asia and South Asia for two decades.

Dire straits.
Photographer: Adek Berry/AFP/Getty Images

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If you thought the closure of the Strait of Hormuz was damaging to the global economy, imagine a similar crisis in the Taiwan Strait. Governments and business should prepare for a scenario that could strangle the flow of around 90% of the world’s advanced semiconductors, essential to everything from artificial intelligence and smartphones to cars and military systems.

China will be taking stock of how both Iran and the US have weaponized the Strait of Hormuz and weighing Beijing’s options on Taiwan. In his first public statement on the conflict, President Xi Jinping on Tuesday described the international order as “crumbling into disarray.”