Taiwan is preparing its citizens for a Chinese invasion

In the imaginary blockade of “Zero Day,” a Taiwanese television drama set to premiere next year but already causing a stir, the Chinese military has surrounded Taiwan, cutting it off from the world and plunging the island democracy of 23 million people into crisis.

In a 17-minute trailer released last week, audiences respond to the Chinese blockade with a mix of terror and resignation. Young couples ride bicycles past convoys of tanks on empty streets. Gangs of criminals cause chaos in the name of Beijing and its territorial claims to Taiwan.

Taiwanese people shouldn’t fight and couldn’t win anyway, one influencer tells her followers in the series. “Those who want us to enter the battlefield don’t really care about our suffering,” she says.

It may be fiction, but the series’ bleak assessment of Taiwanese willingness to fight touches on a very real issue facing President Lai Ching-te (also known as William Lai), who took office in May and is viewed by Beijing as a dangerous separatist.

The threat from Beijing has intensified as Chinese leader Xi Jinping has declared China’s “reunification” with Taiwan inevitable. He has underlined his willingness to use force to achieve that goal by sending increasing numbers of warplanes and naval vessels to probe the island’s defenses.

Taiwan’s government has been trying to improve its defenses by expanding conscription and revamping reservist training, part of a broader shift in defense strategy designed to make Xi think twice about using force.

But Taiwanese youth are not answering the call, and Defense Minister Wellington Koo recently acknowledged that a lack of equipment and instructors has slowed attempts to professionalize reservist training. “I must honestly say that we need to quickly strengthen our training,” Koo said. [la formación]as there is still much room for improvement,” he told the legislature in June.

Such admissions may worry Donald Trump, who has signalled a more transactional approach to US support for Taiwanese defence if he is re-elected president in November.

Taipei wants to create a professional reinforcement force to support 155,000 active-duty soldiers. All Taiwanese born in 2005 or later must enlist for one year of service, while about 2 million former soldiers must complete refresher training every two years.

But officials have acknowledged they are behind schedule on plans to train reservists and conscripts to supplement front-line troops in the event of war. Only 6 percent of eligible conscripts — 6,936 people — took part in the newly introduced 12-month program this year. Most put off military service to attend college first, meaning the incoming cohort born in 2005 will not be fully formed until 2027.

Those doing military service this year are not getting the training they were supposed to. A select group of one-year recruits were supposed to learn how to use drones, Kestrel anti-tank rockets and Stinger surface-to-air missiles, but there were not enough recruits this year to begin training, according to a Defense Ministry official.

Taiwan’s slowness in ramping up training worries military experts in both Washington and Taipei, who are urging authorities to act more quickly to deter Xi and avoid war.

“The last thing Taiwan wants is for Xi Jinping, as China’s key decision-maker, and the United States, as Taiwan’s key ally, to doubt Taiwan’s commitments to its own defense,” said Matt Pottinger, who was a deputy U.S. national security adviser in the Trump administration and is now a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

To do so, Pottinger said, Taiwan needs the political will and foresight to devote some of its best military officers to recruitment and training. “I really hope Taiwan will make these sacrifices,” he said.

China’s military, the world’s largest standing army, has 2 million active-duty personnel and recruits about 400,000 soldiers a year. Its $230 billion defense budget was 13 times that of Taiwan in 2023, and its military trains regularly to take the island in a sudden, overwhelming assault.

The United States is required by law to help Taiwan bolster its own defenses, including through arms sales, but is not formally committed to intervening against a Chinese attack, a policy known as “strategic ambiguity.”

While President Biden has repeatedly said he would send the U.S. military to defend Taiwan, Trump has made no such promises. Asked what he would do in an interview last month, Trump said Taiwan was “9,500 miles away” and that he should pay for U.S. defense.

Taiwan must be “mentally prepared” for a Trump victory in November — and the scrutiny that will come with it, said Mei Fu-hsing, director of the Taiwan Security Analysis Center, a New York-based think tank.

“And [Trump] “If re-elected, he will undoubtedly demand that Taiwan significantly increase its own defense spending and be more proactive in preparing for war,” Mei said.

Improved training is a key way for Taiwan to show it is serious about military readiness, analysts say. But new programs have continued to face shortages of funding, instructors and equipment, leading to periodic complaints from attendees about the quality of instruction, reservists say, as well as official statements acknowledging setbacks.

“It was a complete waste of time,” said Vincent Tsao, a 30-year-old scuba instructor who spent most of his five days of reservist training last week sitting around doing nothing, being taught by retired soldiers who openly acknowledged they weren’t prepared to lead the program.

Taiwanese who have completed mandatory service in the past 12 years are theoretically called up for refresher training every two years, although in practice many attend much less frequently. Only a fifth of reservists who went through refresher training last year completed the newly expanded two-week course, and most only did so for five or seven days.

Preparing 2 million reservists for “immediate combat” as a second line of defense is “very important for Taiwan’s defense,” said Han Gang-ming, former director of Taiwan’s Total Defense Mobilization Office, which oversees the reservists.

“As the reserve force is not the main combat unit, we are always placed last when budgets are allocated,” Han said.