A pedestrian crosses the road in front of an armed military vehicle as it patrols outside the Songshan Airport in Taipei on Oct. 14.DANIEL CENG/AFP/Getty Images
A TV series is being produced on Taiwan to dramatize, for the first time, what an attack from China might look like, a creative effort to prompt residents of the self-governed island to prepare for the possibility of a real-life military confrontation.
Zero Day is set for release in 2025, coinciding with the return of the U.S. presidency to Donald Trump, who has mused about the vulnerability of the independent island. The show imagines an assault beginning with Beijing’s naval blockade of the island on the pretext of a search-and-rescue operation for a downed military aircraft.
The blockade starts to squeeze Taiwan, which relies on imports of food and energy. Beijing proposes a peace agreement, and the financial system starts to collapse. Hackers from China disrupt Taiwan’s internet, the power grid and the water supply. Fifth-column collaborators emerge, and criminal gangs in Beijing’s pocket break down social order, as people begin to flee.
A smiling TV announcer from China, in a feed broadcast across the island’s telecommunications networks, assures the Taiwanese: “We belong to the same family.” But she also warns them to raise their hands in the air if they encounter a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldier.
The 10-episode production, each one by a different director, takes inspiration from the structure of the dystopian Black Mirror TV series. Zero Day is an attempt by its backers to start a difficult conversation in Taiwan about the military threat posed by China – one they say a majority of the population isn’t keen to address.
“Taiwanese people just try to ignore it. We choose not to talk about it,” series producer and show-runner Cheng Hsin-mei said of the possibility of invasion.
She hopes the show prompts Taiwanese to prepare for what is coming, and that it signals to the world a conflict should not be treated as a Chinese internal matter: “This is not a civil war. It would be a war between two different states.”
Beijing’s Communist Party of China considers Taiwan a breakaway province despite the fact it has never ruled the island, where defeated nationalist forces retreated after losing the Chinese civil war more than 70 years ago. Beijing seeks to annex the island of 24 million by what it calls peaceful reunification, but it says it will not rule out using force if Taiwan pursues independence. China has staged military exercises near Taiwan more than 10 times since 2018.
The U.S. supports neither the use of force to change the cross-Strait status quo nor Taiwan’s pursuit of independence, but whether Washington would intervene remains up in the air. The departing U.S. President, Joe Biden, has said he would support Taiwan militarily if it were attacked.
But remarks Mr. Trump made during the 2024 presidential campaign have raised doubts about his commitment to protecting and defending the island. In July, he told Bloomberg he “wouldn’t feel too secure if I was [Taiwan]” and suggested the island should pay the United States protection money for its defence.
A poll conducted in September by the Taipei-based Institute for National Defence and Security Research (INDSR), a government-funded think tank, found that, while the Taiwanese see Beijing as a serious threat, only 61 per cent of respondents think it is “unlikely or very unlikely” that the island would be attacked in the next five years. (The poll of 1,214 has an error margin of plus or minus 2.81 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.)
Ms. Cheng said she thinks many Taiwanese people feel helpless. This island is the No. 1 target for disinformation operations, a form of psychological warfare aimed at dividing people, the producer said. By this definition, she believes “the war has already started.”
Zero Day carries consequences for all involved. Actors, producers and directors face the risk they could be blacklisted from working in China’s massive entertainment market.
The show will also fuel debate over how and when the China might act. Lee Jyun-yi, an associate research fellow at the INDSR said he believes a quarantine is among the most likely measures used to escalate action against Taiwan.
Stopping maritime traffic to assert control over access to Taiwan would require shipping companies to recognize Beijing’s authority to police the waters around the island. It would be a law enforcement–led operation by China’s coast guard or other vessels instead of warships. Mr. Lee said a quarantine would be an effort to stay below the threshold of military action.
“The objective is not to necessarily to take back Taiwan, but to make lives in Taiwan more difficult,” he said. It could be used to push Taiwan to the negotiating table, in combination with a disinformation campaign and cyber attacks that cripple the island’s infrastructure.
The U.S. military has said China aims to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. But Chieh Chung, a researcher at the Association of Strategic Foresight, another Taipei-based think tank, said he believes Beijing does not feel it would be sufficiently prepared by that time.
He said the PLA has been reassessing its capabilities after watching Russia’s war on Ukraine and has several projects under way to address this that will not be finished until between 2030 to 2035. China wants a rapid invasion that achieves a surrender from Taipei before Taiwan’s allies can act, Mr. Chieh said.
Oriana Skylar Mastro, a centre fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, said there is no scenario where Taiwan can successfully defend itself against China without direct U.S. military intervention.
“What we’re talking about is: Can Taiwan do it on its own long enough for the United States military to get there?” she said.
There will be no option of resupplying Taiwan after an invasion begins because the island will be surrounded with China’s military assets, she added: “We can’t get anything in once the war starts.”
Shen Ming-shih, a research fellow and director at the INDSR, said the consequences if Taiwan falls to Beijing are enormous. He predicts Beijing would later move to seize the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands from Tokyo.
“If you lose Taiwan, Japan will be the new front line,” he said.