I don't think this is quite how it would work. Taiwan isn't even remotely close to self sufficient on many critical things including food and energy. This means they are extremely vulnerable to a naval blockade, with no realistic means of combating it. And breaking such a blockade would probably be impossible. It's not just that they're a tiny little island right off the coast of China, but the geography of the island itself makes a blockade even more unstoppable. Most of the island is made up of inhospitable mountains, with a sliver of hospitable land mostly on one side, the side that faces China. This [1] is a population density map of Taiwan. China is as little as 80 miles to their West.

And by "free world" I guess you mean the anglosphere, gradually shrinking globalist parts of the EU, and perhaps Japan/South Korea. That's now less than 15% of the global population and declining. Economically BRICS overcame the G7 back in 2018 [2], and the difference has only grown far more stark since. The times have really changed a lot over the past ~20 years. I think the collapse of the USSR was probably the worst thing to ever happen to the US, because it gave us a taste of global hegemony that was never sustainable, yet left us addicted to its fleeting flavor.

[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_density_of_T...

[2] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1412425/gdp-ppp-share-wo...