A Chinese military blockade of Taiwan ignites panic across the self-ruled island as banks shut down, families flee, fake news spreads and Taiwanese troops brace for attack.
The on-screen chaos is the basis of a new Taiwanese television series called Zero Day (零日攻擊), which creators hope will “awaken” people to the real-life threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Beijing has long vowed to annex Taiwan, by force if necessary. But rather than dramatize the cross-strait tensions, Taiwan’s film and television industry has shied away from the topic for fear of losing access to the world’s biggest Chinese language market.
Photo: Chen Yi-chuan, Taipei Times
Lo Ging-zim (羅景壬), one of 10 directors involved in Zero Day, said the war in Ukraine, resurgence of the China-friendly Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in Taiwan and China’s growing efforts to influence the nation meant it could no longer be ignored.
“Media around the world were talking about the next battlefield could be the Taiwan Strait,” Lo told said, recalling 2022 when the idea for Zero Day emerged. “It started from a group of people all worried and anxious about the same thing, deciding to gather and take action.”
Zero Day, which refers to the first day Chinese troops land in Taiwan, features 10 standalone episodes and is expected to premiere this year.
Photo courtesy of Zero Day
The trailer shows chaos erupting across Taiwan as Chinese forces surround the island on the pretext of searching for crew members of a military plane that disappeared over nearby waters.
Chinese disinformation floods Taiwan’s Internet, cash machines stop working, stock markets crash and families dragging suitcases seek to escape. The actor playing Taiwan’s president urges people “to unite” in a televised address, warning “without freedom, Taiwan is not Taiwan.”
‘LOOMING THREAT OF WAR’
Photo: AFP
Real-world analysts have warned a Chinese blockade of Taiwan could precede an invasion, and China’s military has practiced cutting off the island during drills.
Taiwan would be outgunned in any conflict with China and would need the United States and other countries to come to its defense.
Zero Day producer Cheng Hsin-mei (鄭心媚), who wrote one of the episodes of the series, said she wanted to “awaken Taiwanese people to the looming threat of war.”
Photo: AFP
She also hoped to inform the international community that Taiwan was not part of China.
“We must tell the world we are not the same political system — we are a free and democratic place and we elect our own president,” Cheng said.
“So when the regime launches an independent act of aggression, it is not a civil war, it is an invasion.”
The Zero Day cast includes actors from Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan. Cheng said 70 percent of those approached for the series declined to take part, worried they would be blocked from productions hoping to enter China.
Taiwanese actor Kaiser Chuang (莊凱勛) plays a businessman in financial difficulty who unwittingly receives help from Chinese collaborators.
Chuang believes his involvement in Zero Day has already cost him one role, but he firmly insists the series “needed to be made.”
“A life of peace, security and freedom doesn’t come through fear and submission,” said Chuang, describing Zero Day as a “wake-up call.”
“It only comes from constant vigilance, making ourselves stronger, identity with our country and land and unity among people living here.”
‘NOT POLITICAL PROPAGANDA’
To make Zero Day more realistic, creators consulted military and political experts and shot key scenes on site, including a Taiwanese naval vessel and the Presidential Office in Taipei.
Lawmaker Lin Chien-chi (林倩綺) from the pro-Beijing KMT criticized the series for creating “an atmosphere of panic” and blurring “reality and fiction excessively.”
“It inevitably leads to speculation about whether the filming perspective and thinking behind this series are related to the ruling party’s political agenda,” Lin said, referring to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). While the production received NT$230 million (US$7.6 million) in funding from the government and private sector, director Lo insisted it was not propaganda.
“We are not making a political propaganda film, nor is it some kind of informational or civil defense educational video — it’s none of those,” Lo said.
“It is a drama. It should attract the audience through human nature, human emotions and human vulnerability.”
Cheng, the producer, said there had been strong international interest in the series and the team was now in talks with several online streaming platforms and television networks around the world.
“It’s also a way to prove that even without access to the Chinese market, Taiwanese drama can still break into other regions,” she said.
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
The latest Formosa poll released at the end of last month shows confidence in President William Lai (賴清德) plunged 8.1 percent, while satisfaction with the Lai administration fared worse with a drop of 8.5 percent. Those lacking confidence in Lai jumped by 6 percent and dissatisfaction in his administration spiked up 6.7 percent. Confidence in Lai is still strong at 48.6 percent, compared to 43 percent lacking confidence — but this is his worst result overall since he took office. For the first time, dissatisfaction with his administration surpassed satisfaction, 47.3 to 47.1 percent. Though statistically a tie, for most
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
RSS