Top Army leaders say the Chinese military would face significant challenges if it were to attempt to invade Taiwan.

At a panel discussion Monday hosted by the American Enterprise Institute — a right-leaning policy think tank in Washington, D.C. — U.S. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth and U.S. Army Pacific commander Gen. Charles Flynn spoke about how they saw the Army’s role in the Pacific amid simmering tensions.

The Chinese military has in recent years invested heavily in new warships, aircraft and missiles. Beijing now boasts the world’s largest navy.

But Flynn said it will take more than that if Chinese leaders are serious about taking over Taiwan, asserting that the Chinese military is “not going to do it through H-6 bombers and subs and ships; you’re going to have to generate invasion force. … You have to go across an 80- to 100-mile strait; then you have to seize, hold, defend and consolidate gains in Taiwan.”

Flynn, who oversees the Army’s Pacific operations from Fort Shafter, said that while the Chinese military has increased its capabilities significantly over the past decade and that “the military arm that they have created is extraordinary,” he thinks Chinese commanders are still working to build a force that they themselves think is capable of such an invasion.

“The complexity of a joint island landing campaign is not a small matter, and you have to be an incredibly professional, well-trained, well-led force — and they’re working on it — but I will tell you that from my perspective they’re not 10 feet tall, they have work to do,” said Flynn. “I think that now is the time for us to get into position, to be able to deter that event from happening.”

Beijing considers self-ruled Taiwan a rogue province, and Chinese leader Xi Jinpeng has vowed to bring it under its control by military force if necessary. The island is a major trade partner for the U.S. and a key provider of semiconductors that many American companies depend on to make their products work.

“We want to lower the temperature in the relationship with China,” said Wormuth. “I personally am not of the view that an amphibious invasion of Taiwan is imminent, but we have to obviously prepare. We’ve got to be prepared to fight and win that war, and I think the best way we avoid fighting that war is by showing (China) and countries in the region that we can actually win that war.”

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon plans to deploy 100 to 200 troops to Taiwan this year, essentially quadrupling the small training program it has quietly run on the island.

The United States has not officially diplomatically recognized Taiwan since normalizing relations with the People’s Republic of China in 1979, but the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 maintained de facto ties and requires the U.S. to provide Taiwan with weapons “of a defensive nature” and “resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.”

With its vast stretches of ocean, the Pacific region is usually regarded by American policymakers as Navy turf when it comes to military matters. U.S. Indo-­Pacific Command at Camp Smith, which oversees all operations in the region, has throughout its decades-long history always been commanded by a Navy admiral. But Flynn and Wormuth said that the Army would play a critical role in supporting the Navy and Air Force in the event of a major conflict in the region with logistics, facility support and security.

The Army has been deploying troops to countries around the region for training exercises through Operation Pathways. Wormuth said that during those deployments the Army is “showing visible combat credible forces forward in the region” and that “our goal is to have Army forces in the Indo­-Pacific seven to eight months out of the year.”

China has been embroiled in a series of disputes with neighboring countries over territorial and navigation rights in the South China Sea. Beijing considers the entire sea its exclusive territory and has built bases on disputed islands and reefs to assert its claims.

The Pentagon has signed a series of new basing agreements with several countries around the Pacific, including the Philippines. The Philippines and China have sparred over the disputed Spratly Islands. In 2016 an international court ruled in the Philippines’ favor and declared that Beijing’s territorial claim had “no legal basis.” But the Chinese military has continued to build bases and regularly intimidates Filipino fishermen in the area.

In February, Maj. Gen Joseph Ryan, commander of the Schofield Barracks-based 25th Infantry Division, told Stars and Stripes that his troops may be spending more time in the Philippines this year and that with the new agreement “we’re going to be able to open up the aperture, not only on this year … but perhaps in years to come as well.”

Many analysts think the Spratlys could become strategically important during a Taiwan conflict. In a recent interview with Nikkei Asia, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said, “When we look at the situation in the area, especially the tensions in the Taiwan Strait, we can see that just by our geographical location, should there in fact be conflict in that area … it’s very hard to imagine a scenario where the Philippines will not somehow get involved.”

In a conflict Chinese forces could have other avenues of taking on Taiwan besides an all-out invasion. Some analysts have warned that China’s large navy could set up a blockade to choke off Taiwan from the global economy, crippling the island. “There’s definitely the possibility of a protracted conflict,” said Wormuth.

The rivalry between China and Taiwan has stretched into the Pacific islands, with Beijing convincing several island nations to cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan in return for investment and development funding.

“Their currency is corruption,” said Flynn. “They get into a loan deal with business leaders or political leaders or military and police leaders, and then they can’t pay that loan back, (then) they get into their IT backbone, they get into their electrical grid, they get into warehouses, piers, airfields, ports, and they get access. Access to what? They get access to terrain.”

Notably Kiribati, an island nation south of Hawaii, has become part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative — a series of Chinese-funded infrastructure projects around the globe. Among the projects in Kiribati is the renovation of a World War II-era airfield. Flynn praised the White House for pushing for the reopening of embassies in Pacific island countries, saying, “Our presence needs to be felt because it’s essentially on the doorstep of the homeland.”