The TV anchor reads the news without flashing: China imposes a blockade on Taiwan, seemingly ready to attack. When the broadcast was transferred to the Ministry of Defense, she turned to the producer in disbelief: “Is there really going to be a war?”

This is fictional: the scene of a Taiwanese TV series Zero day, This will be released this summer. But the controversial series is the first work of popular entertainment that realistically portrays the Chinese invasion - aiming to have real-world impact by forcing the public in the country to ask the same questions.

“We Taiwanese have lived together for so long, but we never dared to touch it.” Zero Day Producer Cheng Hsin-Mei. "But Taiwan is so free now, so why can't we talk about it?"

Since China's Kumantan government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after China defeated the Chinese civil war, Beijing has threatened to take the island away by force. For decades, it lacked the military power to follow. Then, with Taiwan’s investment in China’s economic development, the close ties established made the war impossible.

but Zero Day It was the beginning of a full-scale attack on Russia's increasing military operations around Ukraine and Taiwan, making the invasion look even more conceivable.

"For the longest time, especially since mainland China began reform and opening up, Taiwanese people didn't understand the possibility of war very well, they just didn't have the concept," said Ma Zhengjin, a professor at the National Defense University in Taiwan. "Now, the public is starting to feel and realize this, especially due to the daily activities of PLA aircraft and ships around Taiwan."

According to a multi-year poll series, Taiwanese believe that if Taipei officially declares independence, the situation will soar to 64% in 2017 to 49% last year.

However, many Taiwanese are trying to imagine being trapped in war and feel that their country is far from ready for a war. "It takes a social persuasion to get society collectively accepted this reality and willing to participate in national defense mobilization," Jack Ma said.

After failing to find supporters of the Taiwanese war movie in its first attempt six years ago, the screenwriter and former journalist Zheng decided to make one by himself. She formed a directorial team, each director directing an episode. The first hour episode will premiere at the Copenhagen Democracy Forum on May 13.

Shot in visceral, highly realistic style Zero Day At the week-long countdown, the lockdown began. Chinese cyber attacks have put stores and houses in darkness. As banks and public transportation collapsed, the familiar, leafy Taipei Street fell into a carnival. Terrible families line up in the dark fishing port to catch up on the boat. Criminal gangs released by corrupt prison officials help Beijing force people to obey oral submission. Finally, soldiers from the Chinese People's Liberation Army arrived.

Observers believe that the play has the potential to attract public imagination in the form of films conducted in Britain and the United States in the 1980s.

“I grew up in the Cold War in the United States, and the fear of nuclear war was a big milestone in my childhood: I had nightmares about it,” said Nathan Batto, a professor at Sinica College. His memories of those dreams include those who are wrapped in a blanket wandering in the nuclear winter - a scene from the 1983 movie the next day A Soviet missile strike in Kansas City, he watched when he was 13 years old.

"It's a cultural symbol that everyone is familiar with," he said.

Zero Day Even if it reveals the deep divisions in Taiwanese society, it may have similar effects.

Although the descendants of people from China are the Kuentan regime that fled 76 years ago, and the island's original residents overwhelmingly reject unity with China, the cracks are widening under increasing pressure from Beijing.

Some KMT politicians have condemned President Lai Ching-te as a warm man because he defined China as a "hostile foreign force" and tried to urgently strengthen Taiwan's defense. The government's move to expel Chinese citizens who openly support the invasion has sparked criticism of Taiwan's persecution of family ties.

Meanwhile, supporters of the Lai Democratic Progressive Party are increasingly concerned about false propaganda, espionage and other infiltrations supported by China.

"As external dangers grow, people also believe that China is threatened from the inside." said Wei Ning Zhan, a political scientist in Sinica's academic circle, citing exchanges between KMT politicians and the Chinese Communist Party and the infiltration of China's criminal network in Taiwan. “These threats are very real.”

KMT politicians believe that their engagement with China can help avoid war. but Zero Day Solve the issue of Taiwan’s loyalty. It features people's first instinct to be portraits of surrendered people, while others flee, some working with the invaders.

This has caused intense controversy. After a 17-minute trailer was released last July, opposition lawmakers asked Zheng to explain whether the work was targeted at a specific party or politician. Other critics denounced the series as a publicity project because it received grants from government-funded film funds, just like many Taiwanese works.

A few days before the shooting, a scene was about to begin where the prison director released the gang in exchange for a promise to undergo a liver transplant to his daughter, and the prison suddenly canceled the location access.

"We say China may infiltrate the prison system to free prisoners from causing social unrest in preparation for invasions - this is the assumption of our national security authorities, and we are based on our conspiracy," Cheng said.

"The Justice Department's correctional agency said it was slandering them and insisted that nothing would happen in their prison," she said, who declined to comment.

Although the series has caused controversy, Zero DayThe creators hope it unites society. Diana Chao's previous works are mostly unpolitical, directing a plot about Taiwanese women's online celebrities, a victim of cognitive warfare. The virtual relationship with the AI ​​character created in Chinese gradually turned her into a gracious influencer, and when Beijing attacked, she urged the audience to surrender.

Chao hopes her audience can understand how their thoughts work. Chao said that education and consumption of Chinese literature has made some "Chinese romantic imagination" in Taiwan, and he himself comes from a universal family.

“Some of our parents’ generation may have feelings for that understandable land and often conflict with China in fact and current nature,” she said.

There are extended debates even in the production team.

"We ask ourselves, when infiltrations are against each other, when war comes, when PLA lands, what is it that we Taiwanese want to protect together?" Zheng said. “In the end, we found it to be freedom, democracy, and it’s the way we live together on this island.”