China attacks! It’s just a TV show… but the fear is real for Taiwan

The city stood still as a large-scale civil defence exercise unfolded, with residents urged to stay indoors and prepare for the worst-case scenario – war with China.

“Nothing to fret about,” said Ah Huang, a noodles seller on Yanji Street in central Taipei. “Just a drill – it happens every year!” But as he sliced a chunk of aromatic boiled beef, he admitted that this year the exercise seemed more urgent.

China has recently intensified military activities in the Taiwan Strait, and Taiwan last month combined two civil defence exercises, staged alongside the island’s biggest annual military simulation.

On Saturday, a 10-part TV drama launched, depicting a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Zero Day Attack gives a chilling portrayal of a society in chaos. In the first episode, a Chinese military plane crashes in the South China Sea and Beijing deploys aircraft and warships for search and rescue, in effect putting Taiwan under a blockade.

Amid the mayhem that follows, some try to leave the island, while others pledge to defend it. Panicking foreigners queue for evacuation and pro-Beijing activists take to the streets to call for surrender. The financial system collapses as shipping and semiconductor stocks plunge. The internet goes down and shops are looted.

“It feels so real and frightening,” said office worker Rachel Hsu after watching Zero Day Attack’s 17-minute official trailer. “I am scared but somehow I still want to watch it.”

Beijing considers Taiwan a Chinese province that should be reunified with the mainland. Taiwanese people have been living with the China threat for so many years, Hsu said, that they sometimes forget about it.

Cheng Hsin-mei, who oversees the series’ script and production, said it should serve as a “wake-up call”. She started work on the storyline in 2022, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which prompted her to confront the need to speak about Taiwan’s fears.

Zero Day Attack has reportedly received backing from Taiwan’s government and drawn criticism from China. A Chinese ministry of defence spokesman said it is an attempt by Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive party “to force compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait into conflict and to harm and ruin one another”.

Photographs by Jx Chen/Zero Day Creative