'Zero Day': New 10-Part Series Imagines What a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Might Actually Look Like

In the wake of a new Taiwanese election, the Chinese People’s Liberation Navy and Air Force surround the island of Taiwan and cut off access to the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan’s stock market crumbles and banks fail. Hackers, infiltrators and Chinese sympathizers wreak havoc on Taiwan’s infrastructure. Foreigners and citizens begin to flee as water, electricity and communications are cut across the island nation. Everything happens over the course of a single week, and everyone knows what’s coming: a full-scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

This is the nightmare scenario imagined by the new 10-part Taiwanese television series “Zero Day.” The show’s 17-minute trailer, released on July 23, 2024, racked up 1.5 million views in just two weeks, which aren’t Marvel-level numbers but is still impressive, given the timeframe. The trailer has left many viewers in Taiwan understandably shaken.

For many Americans, the defense of Taiwan is a potential flashpoint for a “great power” war between the United States and China, a conflict that decision-makers in Washington, D.C., see as all but inevitable. But that potential battlefield is still thousands of miles away while, for the 23.5 million people in Taiwan, the threat of an invasion can cast a shadow of fear and anxiety over daily life.

"Frankly, everyone has their own fears and imaginations about the war, but in our daily lives, many avoid it or even pretend it doesn’t exist,” Hsin-mei Cheng, former journalist and showrunner of "Zero Day," told CNN. “But as the crisis looms larger over the past two years, I think it’s about time we take a hard look at it and open this Pandora’s box. 

“For me, the war has already begun in Taiwan,” she added. “It is not being fought through guns and cannons, but through information and infiltration. It’s permeating our daily lives.”

The Chinese government considers Taiwan a breakaway province that will one day be reunited with mainland China, whether the people on the island want it or not. As Chinese military power grows, its shows of force and strength in the Taiwan Strait have become bolder and more frequent, even as the United States continues to guarantee the island’s security.

Each of “Zero Day’s” 10 episodes depicts an independent aspect of Taiwanese life affected by the fictionalized invasion, as they experience a countdown to the day Chinese troops land on Taiwan’s shores. Hsin-mei Cheng gathered a team of experienced directors to create the series while raising money from wealthy, pro-independence investors and the country’s Ministry of Culture.

The countdown begins after a PLA aircraft “disappears” in the Taiwan Strait in what looks to the Taiwanese leadership like a dreamed-up pretext for China to deploy ships and aircraft to the area. China shuts down the area for what appears to be a staged search-and-rescue mission. It ends with a Chinese military force landing on the Taiwanese island of Kinmen and preparing to make an initial assault. The pre-invasion salvo of misinformation depicted in “Zero Day” includes tactics that only recently became a deep concern for world leaders, such as the deployment of AI-generated deep fakes of Taiwan’s president to lull the population into surrendering.

Anyone who doubts that a show can have a significant long-term effect on real political situations need only look at the November 1983 airing of the made-for-TV movie “The Day After.” Its depiction of the consequences of a nuclear exchange between the United States and Soviet Union shook Americans awake to the realities of the Cold War and nuclear weapons. It even prompted President Ronald Reagan to rethink his hardline Soviet foreign policy.

“I hope the show can serve as a wake-up call to the Taiwanese people: What should we do when we still have the right to choose?” Cheng said.

“Zero Day” has not yet completed production, but plans to wrap filming in November for a 2025 premiere.

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