It’s an odd thing that most Taiwanese people, threatened for decades with war by China to seize them and their island, don’t think about the possibility much. For decades, it’s just seemed unimaginable.
But over the past few years, quite a few have begun turning their minds to what it would be like, discussing the matter with friends. Now, amid that cultural shift, a television series has appeared, depicting what they’ve been imagining.
It’s Zero Day Attack, the first mainstream Taiwanese TV series or movie on the subject.
Until now, depicting a Chinese attack has been considered too contentious, and the government has discouraged media from doing so. The decision of the Taiwan Public Television Service to run Zero Day Attack will surely get more Taiwanese thinking.
Debuting on 2 August, the series also comes amid new defence policies demonstrating that the government, too, is starting to get serious about the war risk, very slowly. In 2024, conscription was extended from four months to a year. In March, President Lai Ching-te announced a defence spending increase from 2.45 percent to more than 3 percent of GDP. Lai has also made unprecedented moves to bolster civil defence, such as the establishment of the Whole of Society Defense Resilience Committee in June 2024.
So, how does Zero Day Attack imagine China will take over Taiwan? In the series, whose 10 episodes are variously directed by acclaimed Taiwanese directors, a Chinese reconnaissance aircraft crashes into the Pacific off Taiwan’s east coast. In the name of search and rescue, China massively deploys its navy and air force, eventually implementing a blockade on Taiwan. The story unfolds through the eyes of diverse characters, such as a president-elect, television journalists and Taoist temple folk. Tanks are seen on Taiwan’s streets, jets frequently zoom through the skies, and we see many Taiwanese fleeing the island.
The president-elect worries she will fall into a Chinese trap if Taiwan responds by asking the United States for military support. Officials in Lai’s government do in fact have similar worries about appearing globally as a provocateur if Taiwan responds with force to China’s grey-zone military harassment.
In the series, some politicians and street demonstrators pressure the president-elect to sign a peace accord with China and accept the model of governance that Beijing supposedly uses for Hong Kong: one country, two systems. She refuses Beijing’s offer.
The series also features scenarios involving cognitive warfare, notes Puma Shen, an expert in information warfare and a co-founder of Kuma Academy, a civil defense organisation that helps ordinary Taiwanese prepare for a Chinese invasion. Shen, now a lawmaker with Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party, was a consultant to the series. He’s also been blacklisted by Beijing—along with semiconductor magnate Robert Tsao, one of the series’ investors—for inciting ‘separatism’. This prevents him from entering China, Hong Kong or Macau, and also effectively bans entities associated with him from profiting in China.
In Zero Day Attack, we see blackouts. Phone signals become patchy. Taiwan suffers its biggest internet outage ever, one that lasts for more than 24 hours. Beijing’s aim is to sow panic. Television journalists in a newsroom argue about whether to run social-media footage of a missile flying over Taiwan. One journalist says it’s important to wait until the government confirms the video is genuine. Her boss flies into a temper, noting that other Taiwanese TV stations are running the story, and he airs it. In the end, Taiwan’s defence ministry says it is indeed a fake, underscoring the vulnerability of Taiwan’s media to deception.
In another episode, a young woman is a struggling influencer desperate for clicks. Amid the military crisis, she is seduced by an AI bot funded by Beijing. It lavishes the young woman with expensive hotel stays and designer shoes and tells her that if she pivots her content and releases disinformation masquerading as news, she will get loads of subscribers. A Taiwanese government report then finds that many of these subscribers are fake. This gives an impression of online political support for Beijing that doesn’t actually exist.
During the series, China’s government also infiltrates criminal gangs, using them to create havoc on the streets. A Hong Kong gangster backed by Beijing recruits poorly paid Taiwanese youth, highlighting another vulnerability in Taiwanese society. Taiwan’s wage stagnation is considered to be a perennial problem by many Taiwanese, especially when they compare their island with rival economies, such as South Korea.
Behind the scenes, some theatrical agents would not let their actors take part in the series, fearing they would be blacklisted and prevented from distributing content in China. However, the Beijing-backed Hong Kong gangster, Big John, is played by Chapman To, a noted actor from Hong Kong who migrated to Taiwan. He was a vocal supporter of Hong Kong’s democracy movement in 2014, which caused Chinese audiences to boycott his films and production companies to refuse to work with him
One intriguing thing about Zero Day Attack is that the 17-minute trailer, released last year, featured a far more apocalyptic scenario than what the series actually delivered. The trailer featured a complete interruption of water, electricity and telecommunications. In the series, this doesn’t happen. We also don’t see China invade Taiwan, with boots on the ground, although there is fierce fighting on an outlying island. Cheng Hsin-mei, the series’ showrunner, said this was a creative decision. She said the nihilism in last year’s trailer was a hook to get people interested in viewing the series.
Last year’s trailer still prompted Taiwan’s opposition politicians to criticise the series for being propaganda for the Democratic Progressive Party, which favours political and economic distance from China. They noted that the culture ministry had invested in the series, though it has done so for many productions.
Chinese officials are also unlikely to appreciate Zero Day Attack. The state-run media outlet China Daily flew into a lengthy tirade about Lai last year. One of its many claims was his government was stoking ‘anti-mainland’ sentiments and creating ‘social panic’ and ‘war hysteria’ by funding the ‘propagandistic’ Zero Day Attack.
