Reuters witnesses Taiwan's resilience drills, preparing for Chinese blockade, earthquake disruption, and full-scale invasion

(Central News Agency, Nantou, July 3rd, International News) From a Chinese blockade, Beijing using a strong earthquake to create chaos, hijacked television broadcasts, to a full-scale invasion, over 370 government and military officials participated in a series of crisis response drills in Nantou this week to strengthen Taiwan's preparedness for war. Reuters was granted exclusive access to observe this closed-door exercise.

This town resilience drill, held in Nantou, is also Taiwan's first test of whether Nantou officials can cooperate with the central government and military to maintain government operations in the event of an attack on Taiwan.

Reuters reported that Taiwan has been actively strengthening its so-called "resilience" drills in recent years, preparing the public and officials for various crises such as natural disasters or war, a departure from past exercises that were often criticized as superficial and ineffective.

Chiang Chi-chen, Minister without Portfolio and Executive Secretary of the "All-out Defense Mobilization and Readiness Agency," told Reuters, "Our adversary is right at our doorstep, just across the Taiwan Strait, very close."

Chiang said, "If you don't defend your country, who will protect you? I think people are starting to understand this."

He admitted that there are still many shortcomings in the current preparations and that resource scarcity may occur during an actual disaster.

"But that's okay. We want to observe the actual situation of the drill and see if people are willing to absorb and implement these concepts."

The exercise began with a 7-hour tabletop simulation, followed by a field exercise the next day, which included shooting down Chinese drones threatening a power plant and setting up food distribution points.

Under a simulated magnitude 6.8 earthquake scenario that caused 12 deaths, the pressure was further intensified, forcing officials to simultaneously handle disaster relief, infrastructure paralysis, public unrest, and wartime response plans.

A tactical map and communication system developed by the U.S. military was displayed on a large screen in the exercise command center, providing officials with real-time locations of enemy targets.

Next to it were two Taiwanese government platforms that visualized the expanding crisis through interactive maps and icons, including the dispatch and movement of ambulances and other supplies. This also highlighted the core focus of this year's exercise: deeper civil-military integration.

Lin Fei-fan, Deputy Executive Secretary of the "All-out Defense Mobilization and Readiness Agency" and Deputy Secretary-General of the National Security Council, pointed out that reserve command posts at all levels have been directly coordinating with local governments.

Lin said, "We want to send a clear message to our adversaries: when they see that Taiwanese society is prepared, they will have to think twice about launching a war against Taiwan that would be so costly and not necessarily successful."

Officials stated that this exercise learned from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and is closer to the actual situations that emergency responders and critical infrastructure operators might face, such as moving hospital operations underground and conducting stress tests by having professional hackers attack government networks and websites.

One of the exercise scenarios involved a Chinese drone attack on the command center, resulting in the disappearance of 75 officials and forcing authorities to activate contingency plans and urgently set up a backup command post.

An official participating in the exercise said, "We can't let people actually experience war, but we can use scenarios to help everyone understand that war is extremely cruel—all situations will be very severe and urgent."

"If we don't prepare well during peacetime, we won't be able to cope when the time comes."

Nantou officials were also assigned a major strategic mission this time: to turn this, Taiwan's only landlocked county, into a "rear base" for other counties and cities to evacuate to and as a backup operational base for various response efforts while frontline troops engage with the PLA.

Dozens of grassroots government units across Taiwan also participated in the exercise via live broadcast, responding in real-time to various scenarios and questions posed by the command center chief.

Officials were asked about various preparedness details at the grassroots level, ranging from how many men of military age local governments could immediately mobilize to the current inventory of canned infant formula in the county.

The exercise also tested how local authorities would respond to information warfare. As the scenario progressed, Chinese disinformation and sabotage actions became the focus.

In a hypothetical scenario, local television broadcast signals were temporarily hijacked, with the screen switching to Beijing's propaganda content, and leaflets spreading misinformation appeared on the streets. This was similar to scenes from the Taiwanese drama "Zero Day Attack."

Officials held mock press conferences for the drill, and participants also received training on identifying misinformation.

A 75-year-old village chief who led a community response team said that this exercise taught him how to distinguish between true and false information.

He also said, "If the other side launches an attack, they will definitely use artificial intelligence (AI) to spread fake news." (Compiled by Hong Pei-ying) 1150703

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