AUG. 27, 1995: On the final day of his party's convention, Taiwan's President Lee Teng-hui accepts the nomination of his ruling Kuomintang for next March's presidential election and makes remarks that Beijing interprets as pledging a course toward formal independence. Hours later, China angrily announces that extensive military exercises already under way in the East China Sea will be escalated. The Taipei stock market plummets.

AUG. 30: Hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops move to embarkation ports in the provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong. In response, Lee puts Taiwan's armed forces on the highest level of alert and mobilizes all reserves.

SEPT. 1: After dawn, Taiwan naval patrols in the Strait of Taiwan are fired upon by what appear to be Chinese fishing boats. They return fire. China calls it "a hostile act against ordinary Chinese people." Lee urgently asks the U.S. for arms shipments under the Taiwan Relations Act.

SEPT. 5: China announces a naval blockade of all tankers ferrying oil to Taiwan, in an effort to create panic on the is land. But Beijing's step-by-step escalation does not break Taiwanese morale.

SEPT. 11: After five days of air battles over the Taiwan Straits, Taiwan has lost half its air force, and China has tentative control over the air. If Lee doesn't resign from office immediately, China declares, it will start "T-day": the invasion of Taiwan.

SEPT. 13: The invasion begins. Some 100,000 People's Liberation Army soldiers are ready to make the crossing. But lacking a sizable amphibious fleet, China relies on a jumbled flotilla of naval ships, merchant craft and fishing boats to get troops across the 145 km of choppy water. Fortified beach defenses keep the Chinese forces from securing a significant beachhead. They try a second crossing the next day and fail again. P.L.A. paratroopers, having secured key Taiwanese airports, control only parts of the island. Taiwan is in ruins - T-day is a rout.

Invasion is not a scenario China analysts find remotely probable. Despite the fact that China spent last week lobbing test missiles toward the waters north of Taiwan for the second time in a month, rattling the general public and chilling punters at the Taiwan Stock Exchange, the two nations are not anywhere near armed conflict. China's message was plainly political, a warning to both President Lee and his people not to act too independently. The missiles were simply the mainland's way of making a bigger splash. "It's a psychological war ," insists a Western military analyst in Beijing, "a curious combination of political, military and economic diplomacy. The Chinese know that driving the stock market down a few points in a few days has direct impact on public opinion." China's announcement of an underground nuclear test last week only made the jitters worse, though credit-loosening measures in Taiwan helped the stock market get back on its feet.

But what if? What if China's Scud diplomacy did someday veer into war-to a military effort to force unification? Invasion scenario spinning has become a cottage industry in Taiwan. Lin Yu-fang, chairman of the graduate school of International and Strategic Studies at Taipei's Tamkang University, has written a book positing a five-stage invasion, starting with verbal attacks and military exercises, that would be canceled at any point that China achieved a clear acceptance by Taiwan of its future as part of China. In part, Lin was trying to debunk an alarmist best seller of last year, Cheng Lang-ping's August 1995: China's Violent Invasion of Taiwan, which described an invasion on the day of next March's direct presidential election, Taiwan's first.

Most of the scenarios are either exercises in creative political science or plain scare-mongering. But China has specifically threatened a forced unification in one of two circumstances: if Taiwan declares independence, or if it invites foreign intervention. Would "T-day" be a rollover for Beijing? After all, China has amassed 5,000 combat planes and 55 warships and has 2.9 million people in uniform. Taiwan, in contrast, has only 425,000 military personnel, 33 warships and one-tenth the planes. If China tried to take over Taiwan, would it be easy?

Military analysts say no. They conclude that in current circumstances any Chinese T-day takeover attempt would be a tough matchup-and will be even harder two years hence, after Taiwan's air force begins to receive 150 F-16s and 60 Mirage 2000-5s. "The mainland at present doesn't have the military capability to effectively invade Taiwan," asserts Robert Karniol, Bangkok-based Asia-Pacific editor of Jane's Defence Weekly. Agrees Ronald Montaperto, a senior fellow of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the U.S. National Defense University: "I believe short of destroying the island and wreaking great havoc and loss, China could not achieve a decisive military victory at this particular time." On Taiwan, analysts recognize their military is dwarfed by Big Brother's. "But if you consider the special circumstances of island defense," says Su Jing-chang, research fellow at Taipei's Institute for National Policy Research, "our armed forces are basically sufficient to face the threat of a P.L.A. assault."

Certainly China has muscle, but much of it is pretty old, like its flock of 3,000 MiG-19s. "Their equipment is antiquated," says June Teufel Dreyer, a military expert at the University of Miami. "Maintenance is poor. Their attitude seems to be 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' Which is fine if it's a toaster, but if it's a helicopter, you need to do the suggested maintenance procedures." Furthermore, a lot of the muscle is unusable. China has a multitude of men and tanks, but virtually no way to get them to Taiwan. "If there were a land link and the P.L.A. could drive to Taiwan, it would all be over," says Jane's Karniol.

The Strait of Taiwan is actually three times as wide as, and significantly less navigable than, the English Channel. Likewise, the restricted airspace over the island would allow only limited waves of Chinese fighter planes-at the most 390 at a time-which Taiwan could probably combat. And China has little experience in an offshore operation requiring the coordination of air, naval and ground forces.

Far simpler are the logistics on the other side: Taiwan need only defend itself, and it has built a military machine more specifically engineered, especially since 1988, for this particular conflict. Rather than David versus Goliath, the Taiwanese prefer a metaphor closer to home. "The ideal image for Taiwan's defensive posture is a porcupine," says John Bih Chung-ho, editor in chief of the Taipei-based Defense Technology Monthly. "It looks like easy prey, but inflicts a stiff price in pain for any tiger that tries to eat it."

The balance between the two countries is a changing one, dependent on mercurial variables. Much depends on who succeeds ailing Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and how he behaves toward Taiwan. And there is the ambiguous issue of how much support Taiwan could expect from the U.S.

If the current missile flexing ever escalated and T-day did come to pass, these are some of the crucial points of confrontation:

QUICK VICTORY: The Chinese would probably aim for a blitzkrieg pace: Deng Xiaoping is said to have envisioned a 72-hour campaign, largely to keep the U.S. from rushing to Taiwan's defense. Analysts say the idea of prolonged conflict with heavy casualties scares even the hawks in the P.L.A. Many in Taiwan think the best defense is to prevent a victory by China in the first week, thus making the economic and political cost of invasion prohibitive. "Jiang Zemin will only have a limited time, about two weeks, to show results," says retired Taiwanese general Yeh Ching-jung, "or else his grip on power will be threatened, and reaction from the U.S. and other nations may force them to abandon the campaign." China is unlikely to be able to pull off a surprise strike, given the monitoring capabilities of both Taiwan and the U.S. More probable would be a military exercise that suddenly turned into the real thing. A live-fire operation is already under way north of Taiwan, and could reach its peak in October, when Taiwan may conduct its own war games in nearby waters.

CONTROLLING THE STRAIT: To protect its assault, China would have to control first the skies above the Taiwan Strait and then its waters. China has many more planes than Taiwan, but they would need several days to overwhelm Taiwan's interceptor force with its superior aircraft and pilots. Military experts believe China could manage it with difficulty, though not if a U.S. aircraft carrier or American F-15s in Okinawa joined the action. The biggest naval imbalance is in submarines: China has 10 times Taiwan's total, though many are old.

THE ASSAULT: China doesn't have enough amphibious ships to transport troops across the Strait. It might manage a maximum of two divisions, or roughly 24,000. "That's just not enough," says Montaperto. Using the normal ratio of three attackers to every defender, it would probably need to land 300,000 troops for an invasion.

MISSILES: China has a clear technological advantage in missiles, and could arm them with a myriad of warheads-chemical or nuclear. The destructive possibilities are enormous, but in practice may not be more than a threat. Analysts view a nuclear strike as nearly impossible against fellow Chinese.

On both sides of the Strait, military buildups continue. China is modernizing in a piecemeal way: Russia has become a significant supplier, selling 26 Su-27 fighter jets in 1992. Taiwan is aggressively pursuing a technological edge, working to forge, in the words of one defense expert, "a flexible, fast and hard-hitting defense." Besides the acquisition of F-16s and Mirage 2000-5s, Taiwan is beefing up its air force's early-warning capabilities, strengthening its navy's antisubmarine and antiblockade abilities by buying LaFayette missile frigates from France and working on antimissile and antiaircraft batteries. Some analysts say that by the end of the century, Taiwan will be relatively impregnable-until the mainland catches up.

The cost of all this to both sides is huge. But with missiles splashing in the waters 150 km north of the island, it is money well spent in the eyes of most Taiwanese. The current standoff in strategic positions may be one reason why no invasion is expected now-and Taiwan has every reason to want to keep it that way.

-Reported by Hannah Bloch/Washington, John Colmey/Hong Kong and Jaime A. FlorCruz/Beijing

MILITARY IMBALANCE?

[text not available--table comparing the militaries of China and Taiwan]