This is somewhat reddit analysis since in the scenario of US-China conflict starting with a Chinese kinetic action or blockade of Taiwan any US initiated disruption or blockade of ship routes from and towards China serious enough to hurt China enough to "back off" will have already completely collapsed the economies and even societies of Japan, Worst Korea and Phillipines (allies whose assistance let alone normal function the US counts on to be able to do any kind of successull defense of Taiwan), those of most of the "non-aligned" SEA countries and of course Taiwan. Not in a "recession" or "inflation" sense. If the US is able to mount any such successfull sea route choking to have China in crisis within idk 1 month ,most of the countries i mentioned will be imploding within 1-2 weeks. There is no way of doing one without doing the other and at that point you have lost both Taiwan and the entire region.

There is a reason practicaly no US military think tank, war game or DoD analysis seriously considers SEA sea trade route blockading and disruption a strategy US is remotely likely to try. If it was a viable approach to "win the engagement" both sides would know it and it wouldnt be any kind of a secret, you would see it being seriously discussed and analyses by credible sources and people, not on YT videos and r/Noncredible defense

Of course China wants to expand its inland routes and of course it wants to maximize its degree self sufficiency in energy , calories etc. In part because of course sea routes will be disrupted in any Taiwan related US-China conflict even if the US takes no action on that front. But it being used as a strategy by the US and being credibly able to hurt China both enough and quickly enough to cause a defeat before other factors do and without it fucking up every single ally and non ally in the erea first to a degree that will mean the US loses the region anyways

If anything Ansarallah forcing the last line of missile and air defence used by US ships and managing at least a near hit or scare on USS Eisenhower with the 2nd tier Iranian missiles shows that in any hot conflict in SCS there would be 4 US carriers and 15 Destroyers in the bottom of the ocean by the time the first Chinese person goes hungry or without heating due to US initiated sea route disruption

China does also have one of (if not the) largest navies and airforces on the planet, though. I also think that blockading the Strait of Malacca in such a way that it doesn't immediately crash the world economy, including the US's, must be very difficult. Nordstream proves that Biden is capable of doing some sicko shit but that was also an explicit benefit to their own economy.

There's also the Arctic route if China is willing to play the long game and wait for a few years, if they can sufficiently motivate Russia to go all-in there (Putin is committing to making more icebreakers and such AFAIK though)

I do agree though that global shipping routes are pretty fragile now though.

What? The only advantage that Ansarallah has is that it is fighting from its own land and has a million places to hide missiles and that was enough for them to win. Blockading your own costal waters is the exact opposite of using a navy to block international trade routes.