Beware fake news and be ready to resist: how Taiwanese citizens are preparing for a Chinese invasion

Find your nearest shelter, carry bottled drinking water and be prepared to fight for your life. These are the instructions being issued to ordinary Taiwanese citizens in the event of a Chinese invasion of their island, a prospect that became just a little bit more real this week with Beijing’s latest military drills.

The recommendations in a civil defence guide produced by the NGO WatchOut refer loosely to “times of crisis and war”, and most of them could apply just as readily to a massive earthquake or other natural disaster. Residents are told to have a go-bag always at the ready, filled with essential medicines and enough instant noodles, beef jerky and chocolate bars to last at least three days.

But there’s no question that the main threat envisaged by its authors is an all-out invasion by the island’s much larger neighbour: China claims sovereignty over Taiwan as a breakaway province, and its leader Xi Jinping has vowed to “reunite” the island with the mainland by force if necessary.

US intelligence reports say Xi has instructed his military to be ready to invade by the year 2027 if he gives the order, and on Tuesday a record 153 warplanes from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) flew test runs towards the island as part of massive drills designed to intimidate and assess Taiwan’s defences. Beijing called the exercises “punishment” for a National Day speech by Taiwanese president Lai Ching-te vowing to resist Chinese “annexation”.

“We are readying people for the war, even if they believe it is not happening today. China’s war is at our doorstep, with a plethora of misinformation about our president fleeing Taipei and our soldiers not fighting back against the PLA,” Kuochun Hung, WatchOut’s chief operating officer, tells The Independent.

If China does decide to invade democratically governed Taiwan, it will have ramifications far beyond the island’s borders. Taiwanese factories supply around 80 per cent of the world’s semiconductors, vital for all kinds of machinery from satellites and supercomputers to household electronic devices. It would shatter the fragile peace that has held for decades in the much-disputed South China Sea, and see its impacts felt across the region.

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At a summit held by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac) in Taipei in July, the largest gathering of foreign lawmakers ever assembled in Taiwan heard that in many respects, war with China is already here – from misinformation and vitriol spread online and through the media to the military drills around the island that have become a daily occurrence.

The former British foreign secretary William Hague describes this as “cognitive warfare”, writing in The Times that this has become as important a part of Chinese strategic thinking as dominating the physical domain of land, air and sea. “The objective is to break the will of an enemy without the need for actual fighting,” he says. “Chinese attempts to undermine the resolve of the Taiwanese and their leaders illustrate this doctrine in action.”

It has now become part of the morning routine for the Taiwanese armed forces to observe, at around 6am each day, Beijing’s warplanes push past the median line, the de facto air border between the island and the mainland in the Taiwan Strait, driving ever closer towards Taipei before turning back.

In the past two years, China has conducted three large-scale mock invasions or blockades of Taiwan using multiple branches of its military. These are typically framed by Beijing as retaliations, displays of outrage after a perceived affront from Taipei such as the then US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 visit, or last week’s address by President Lai. But Joris Teer, an associate analyst on economic security and technology at the EU Institute for Security Studies, says they also have a very practical purpose.

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“The drills help China to practise both an invasion and a blockade, so they help the Chinese to gain practical experience. The flexing of muscles is also meant to deter greater US arms shipments, high-level visits to Taipei and statements by Taiwan’s government in favour of formal independence,” he tells The Independent.

Another term for what China is doing to Taiwan is “unrestricted warfare”, blurring the lines between different types of aggression which stop short of actual fighting. Pierro Tozzi, director of the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China, calls this “a strategy of subduing one’s enemy without fighting”.

“Everything is weaponised – from economic coercion, wolf warrior diplomacy and transnational repression, to soft power cultural exchanges, TikTok videos and debt trap diplomacy [China’s financial aid to Asian countries like Pakistan and Sri Lanka in return for bilateral support],” Tozzi tells The Independent.

If China did decide to invade, or engage in what Mr Tozzi refers to as “kinetic warfare”, analysts say there are three different scenarios for how a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could play out in practice.

In the first, China aims to overwhelm Taiwanese defences in a single, brutal knockout punch, using an all-out invasion by land and sea and shutting down almost all key maritime and aerial routes to the island in both the China Sea and East China Sea.

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Such an operation would require massive resources and would therefore be signposted some way off – not unlike the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which saw a gradual troop build-up over several weeks before Vladimir Putin gave the order to attack. China has begun stockpiling assets and ammunition in its southern provinces nearest to Taiwan, but at current rates wouldn’t likely have enough for such a blitz until the summer of 2029.

A Chinese invasion would begin with a heavy bombardment of Taiwan’s airports and highways with long-range missiles and traditional bombers. Like in any warzone, communication services would be a key target – WatchOut has recommended citizens keep an old-fashioned radio to hand in their homes, in case that becomes the only way for the island’s government to disseminate information.

Taiwan would be expected to appeal to the US for aid – Washington is bound by its laws to support the island in the event of an attack, though what that would mean in practice has been left deliberately vague. Mr Teer says American and Japanese naval forces would likely be involved in a high-stakes confrontation with Chinese vessels.

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WatchOut runs in-person training camps to prepare Taiwanese citizens, during which it distributes copies of its guidelines. It also produces reels and short videos to get the message out, and has more than 75,000 followers on Instagram.

According to WatchOut’s guidelines, people will need to have enough bottled drinking water for three days, as well as water filters and water purification tablets. The food packed in their go-bags will need to be long-lasting, high-calorie and portable – packing a Swiss army knife or can opener would be a bonus. People should also pack food and supplies for their pet cats and dogs, chief operating officer Hung tells The Independent.

“Use a durable, easy-to-carry and comfortable backpack suitable for long-distance walking. Prepare one emergency preparedness bag per person in your household. Prepare the necessary supplies and pack them in the backpack – labelling the storage date. Check the contents every six months to make sure nothing is expired or needs to be replaced,” the guidelines read. People should be aware of their nearest shelter or assembly point, which could be a government school or public sports facility, the emergency booklet reads.

In the second scenario, which Mr Teer dubs “strangling the porcupine”, Chinese vessels would move in to encircle Taiwan without attacking, enforcing a semi-permanent blockade. Communication lines would be impacted, and the siege-like situation would also impact internet connectivity across the region, including South Korea, Japan and China itself. Within 30 days, China would be in a position to block all maritime and aerial routes to the island.

Such a scenario might conceivably avoid a direct confrontation with Taiwan’s allies like the US, Japan and South Korea, leaving Xi in a strong position to force the Lai administration into talks. For Beijing, the goal of such talks would be for Taipei to cede sovereignty without bloodshed. This is a prospect that Taiwan’s democratically elected government has vehemently rejected.

In the third and final scenario, dubbed “boiling the frog”, China would carry out an on-off blockade by sharply increasing the regularity of its existing drills around the island, to the point where Taiwan’s ability to conduct international trade is significantly impacted. There would be shortages of container ships and maritime insurance premiums would skyrocket, spelling a potential financial disaster for Taipei. This would take time but carries the least risk of a wider military confrontation.

The first two scenarios will have an enormous global impact, Mr Teer tells The Independent, and would not be the preferred options for China. “If Beijing loses hope in achieving its political and strategic goals, it may resort to greater use of force,” he warns.

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Those most concerned about the prospect of an invasion, beyond Taiwan itself, are regional partners who would be the most likely to try and come to the island’s aid. These include South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand.

China must not be allowed to disrespect the law of the sea, says Japanese defence minister Gen Nakatani, calling on efforts to uphold stability. “Make no mistake: any escalation in cross-Strait tensions will not only represent a major political failure on the part of democratic governments but will spell hardship for millions of families around the world,” he told the gathering of lawmakers in Taipei in July. “Taiwan’s hard-won democracy deserves international support regardless of its economic importance,” he added.

Australia has made significant strides in improving its relationship with China under Anthony Albanese, and Labour senator Deborah O’Neill said peace was “always the better option” when asked about the prospect of a Chinese invasion.

“Huge efforts need to go to deterrence and building confidence that the free world understands the consequences of any disruption to the economies of the world,” she tells The Independent. One of the ways of effectively deterring China from invading is to keep lines of communication open, she argues. “We [China and others] do have great differences in terms of our views about what a democracy looks like. Mouthing the words of democracy does not make it so. It is an autocratic state, and that is a very different set of values and propositions. But we must have the difficult conversation when needed.”

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For smaller nations in the region, the spillover effects of a Taiwan conflict could be devastating. China and the Solomon Islands recently signed a defence pact that could allow Beijing to set up a military base on its islands near Papua New Guinea, a partnership that has been criticised as leaving the Solomon Islands vulnerable to being dragged into war.

Peter Kenilorea Jr, the country’s opposition leader, says an escalation over Taiwan must be avoided at any cost. “Coming together to support Taiwan is as important now as ever. There’s a clear push by powers like China and Russia to change the rules-based order and impose their own rule, at a time when some of us are still learning about the rules-based order of the world,” he tells The Independent.

“I always refer to the African proverb by a Kenyan tribe – when two big elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. Solomon Islands will be that grass,” he says. The prospect of a Taiwan conflict should worry decision-makers in Europe just as much as the war happening on their doorstep, he warns. “Just because an ocean separates us, unlike Ukraine’s invasion in the neighbourhood, doesn’t mean this is a war in the distance.”