Taiwan Defends Its Preparations Against China, Rejects the Word Provocation

Introduction: a sentence that flips the accusation

A senior official breaks the diplomatic silence

On July 7, 2026, in a conference room in Taipei, Lin Fei-fan, deputy secretary-general of Taiwan's National Security Council, delivered a line that leaves no room for the usual diplomatic hedging. According to remarks reported by Reuters, he said: "People often frame Taiwan's preparations as a provocation toward the other side." Then he flipped the accusation with surgical precision.

"I want to take this opportunity to tell everyone: all of China's preparations have a clear purpose, military aggression and outward expansion," he declared. This was no slip of the tongue. It was a deliberate, documented position, repeated before an international forum, at a moment when Beijing keeps ramping up shows of force around the island.

The backdrop of a methodical escalation

This statement comes after months of growing Chinese air and naval incursions into Taiwan's air defense identification zone. The government of Taiwan, led by President Lai Ching-te, has launched a resilience effort described as "whole of society," mobilizing civilians, reservists and critical infrastructure into a comprehensive defensive posture.

Lin Fei-fan pressed a verifiable factual contrast: "Taiwan today is not flying any planes or sending any warships to intrude into the other side's airspace or waters. The one provoking regional order is none other than China."

The doomsday scenario rehearsed in Nantou

An unprecedented closed-door exercise

Three days before Lin Fei-fan's statement, an exclusive Reuters investigation published on July 3, 2026, revealed the details of a simulation exercise held in Nantou, bringing together more than 370 government and military officials. It was the first closed-door exercise of its kind ever organized by Taiwan, combining several layers of simultaneous crisis.

The scenario imagined a Chinese naval blockade, a magnitude-6.8 earthquake with a simulated death toll of twelve people, sabotage of undersea cables and critical infrastructure, hijacked television broadcasts, a bank run and civil unrest, before culminating in a full invasion scenario.

A generation learning to defend itself

Chi Lien-cheng, one of the officials involved in the exercise, summed up the mood of the moment: "Our adversary is right at our door, on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. It's very close." He added: "If you don't defend your own country, who else will? I think people are starting to understand that."

The exercise included a seven-hour tabletop session and field maneuvers, including a simulated takedown of a Chinese drone threatening a power plant, as well as the setup of food-rationing stations. A drone-attack scenario left 75 officials classified as missing within the exercise, a figure that illustrates just how seriously planners are taking the threat.

China's response, a ballet of bombers

A joint combat patrol during the exercise

While Taiwan simulated its defense, China staged its own show of force. According to Reuters, the People's Liberation Army conducted a "joint combat readiness patrol" involving more than 22 military aircraft, including H-6 bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons, at the very moment the Taiwanese exercise was underway.

This timing is likely no coincidence. It illustrates a strategy of constant pressure, where every Taiwanese defensive move is immediately followed by a Chinese show of force meant to remind everyone who holds, on paper, the raw military superiority in the region.

Beijing accuses Lai of warmongering

The spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office, Zhu Fenglian, responded by accusing President Lai Ching-te of deliberately escalating tensions, calling him a "destroyer of cross-strait peace, creator of crises... instigator of war." This Chinese rhetoric seeks to flip the narrative, presenting Taiwan's defensive measures as the true source of regional instability.

The Taiwan Affairs Office did not directly respond to Reuters's questions about Lin Fei-fan's statement, a silence that, implicitly, leaves the burden of proof squarely on the Taiwanese side — a country that documents its simulations while the other settles for rhetorical accusations.

Lessons drawn from Ukraine and the Middle East

Direct learning from other wars

According to Reuters, Taiwanese planners explicitly drew on lessons observed during the war in Ukraine and conflicts in the Middle East to design their resilienceexercise. This influence is no accident: it reflects a clear-eyed recognition that modern warfare is no longer confined to the battlefield, but also spans disinformation, infrastructure sabotage and civilian resilience.

The relative success of Ukrainian resistance against a supposedly overwhelming Russian army has clearly fed the Taiwanese conviction that a well-prepared defense, backed by a mobilized society, can seriously complicate an aggressor's calculations, even one vastly superior in numbers.

The fiction that anticipated reality

The 2025 Taiwanese television series titled "Zero Day Attack," which depicts a fictional Chinese invasion, was cited as the cultural backdrop to this national awakening. Lee I-yuan, a 75-year-old neighborhood chief who took part in the exercise, warned: "If the other side attacks, they will certainly use AI to spread false information."

That statement, coming from an ordinary citizen mobilized in a government exercise, shows just how far awareness of hybrid warfare — disinformation, generative AI, opinion manipulation — has spread beyond Taiwan's military circles and reached the civilian population itself.

The strategic calculus behind deterrence

Making invasion costly rather than impossible

Lin Fei-fan summed up the deterrent logic behind these preparations: "The message to our adversary is clear: once they know Taiwanese society is prepared, they will have to think very carefully before launching such a costly war against Taiwan — a war that might not succeed." This formulation does not claim to make an invasion impossible, only costly enough to discourage its launch.

This is a doctrine of deterrence by cost, not by certainty of victory. It implicitly acknowledges the asymmetry in raw militarypower between Taiwan and China, while betting on combined civilian and military preparation to tilt Beijing's calculus toward restraint.

"If we don't act today"

Lin Fei-fan also warned: "If we don't act today, strength will not suddenly appear tomorrow." That line captures the urgency felt by Taiwanese authorities in the face of a strategic window judged to be narrowing, especially as the symbolic 2027 deadline set by Beijing for the modernization of its armed forces approaches.

He concluded with a statement worth quoting in full: "There would be immediate peace if China abandoned its military ambitions toward Taiwan. But if Taiwan gives up its ability to defend itself now, there will be no more Taiwan left in the world."

The symbolic and material weight of civilian preparation

A mobilization that goes beyond the military

The Nantouexercise was not a purely military drill. It involved scenarios of bank runs, food rationing and health-crisis management following a simulated earthquake, illustrating a total defense approach that engages the entire civilian state apparatus, not just the armed forces.

This "whole of society" approach promoted by President Lai Ching-te rests on the idea that a nation's resilience against an invasion or a blockade is not measured solely in tanks or missiles, but in the collective capacity to keep essential functions running — food, energy, communications, public order — under the strain of a prolonged crisis.

The doubt that lingers despite preparation

The drone-attack scenario that left 75 officials listed as missing is a reminder that even the best-prepared exercise cannot fully eliminate the uncertainty of an actual conflict. Planners themselves acknowledge that simulation, however rigorous, never replaces the test of real combat.

What the exercise cannot simulate is the actual reaction of a civilian population confronted with a genuine invasion, nor the lasting strength of the international alliances on which Taiwan implicitly relies for its long-term survival.

Washington's silence and strategic ambiguity

An alliance that never quite says its name

The United States has for decades maintained a policy known as "strategic ambiguity" toward Taiwan, refusing to explicitly state whether it would intervene militarily in the event of a Chinese invasion. This ambiguity, originally designed to deter both Beijing from attacking and Taipei from declaring formal independence, is now being questioned by experts who see it as a dangerous source of uncertainty.

In this context, Taiwan's self-reliant preparation takes on added meaning: it does not depend solely on outside promises, but builds a capacity for resistance that would exist regardless of how far Western allies are ultimately willing to commit at the critical moment.

Deterrence that must stand credible on its own

This is precisely the logic behind why Taiwan invests so heavily in civilianresilience exercises rather than relying solely on a hypothetical outside intervention. The most reliable deterrence remains the one the island can demonstrate for itself, independent of Washington's shifting calculations.

This forced strategic self-reliance points to a reality few Western leaders dare state outright: at the decisive moment, Taiwan may have to count first on its own preparation before any outside reinforcement arrives.

Undersea cables, an invisible lifeline

A vulnerability rarely discussed publicly

The undersea cable sabotage scenario included in the Nantouexercise points to a strategic vulnerability often overlooked in public discussions of a potential Chinese invasion: Taiwan's dependence on a limited number of undersea telecommunications cables to stay connected to the rest of the world.

Earlier incidents of damage to undersea cables near Taiwan, attributed to vessels linked to China, have already fueled concerns among Taiwanese authorities on this front. A coordinated sabotage of this infrastructure could isolate the island informationally before any kinetic conflict even begins.

Disinformation as a weapon of hybrid warfare

Lee I-yuan's warning about the likely use of artificial intelligence to spread false information in the event of an attack ties into this broader concern: an adversary seeking to isolate Taiwan would first cut its reliable communication lines before flooding the remaining information space with manipulated content.

This combination of physical sabotage and information manipulation represents exactly the kind of hybrid warfare that Western democracies have already witnessed, on a smaller scale, in the context of Russia's war against Ukraine.

The Ukrainian precedent as warning and as hope

What Kyiv has proven despite everything

Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion launched in 2022 has demonstrated that a smaller nation, backed by determined civilian mobilization and substantial international support, can inflict considerable costs on a supposedly overwhelming military aggressor. This precedent directly feeds Taiwan's preparation doctrine.

But the analogy has its limits, ones Taiwanese planners know well: Taiwan is an island, with no land border allowing continuous resupply of the kind Ukraine enjoys via Poland and other NATO neighbors. A Chinese naval blockade could prove far harder to work around than a partial land blockade.

Islandhood, a unique logistical challenge

This geographic constraint explains why the naval blockade scenario occupies a central place in Taiwanese exercises, even more than a direct invasion scenario. A prolonged blockade, without requiring an armed landing, could be enough to economically strangle the island and force a political capitulation without a massive direct military confrontation.

It is this geographic reality that makes civilian preparation — food stockpiles, energy, banking resilience — just as central as strictly military preparation in Taiwan's current defensive doctrine.

The economic dimension of a potential crisis

Taiwan, a linchpin of global semiconductors

Beyond the direct geopolitical stakes, Taiwan occupies a central position in the global supply chain for advanced semiconductors, notably through companies like TSMC. A prolonged conflict or blockade of the island would have immediate global economic repercussions, far beyond the Indo-Pacific region alone.

For some Western analysts, this economic reality is an additional argument for firmer commitment from Western powers to the defense of Taiwan, going beyond democratic solidarity to touch on concrete and immediate economic interests.

A lever Beijing understands too

This global dependence on Taiwanese semiconductors nonetheless cuts both ways: it could discourage some international actors from confronting China too directly for fear of broad economic retaliation, or it could instead reinforce Western determination to protect this critical infrastructure at all costs.

This economic ambiguity adds yet another layer of complexity to an already saturated file of strategic uncertainties, where military, diplomatic and economic calculations intertwine without any single capital able to claim a complete view of all possible scenarios.

What China's silence on specifics reveals

A general accusation rather than a factual response

The Taiwan Affairs Office's refusal to directly respond to Lin Fei-fan's specific claims, preferring instead a general accusation against President Lai Ching-te, illustrates a revealing asymmetry of method. On one side, verifiable facts, documented exercises, precise participant numbers. On the other, accusatory rhetoric with no factual counter-argument.

This asymmetry is, notably, not trivial within the context of a broader information war in which Beijing seeks to shape the international narrative around Taiwan as a rebellious province rather than a functioning democracy of 23 million people with its own institutions.

The battle of narrative, as important as the military battle

In a world where international opinion can influence the level of support given to Taiwan in a crisis, this battle over narrative — who provokes, who defends — becomes a strategic front in its own right, distinct from but linked to the military and civilian preparations on the ground.

It is precisely for this reason that Lin Fei-fan's statement deserves to be taken seriously beyond its immediate reach: it is a deliberate attempt to set the terms of the debate before Beijing manages to impose its own inverted victim narrative.

Lessons for other island and frontline democracies

A model watched beyond the Pacific

Taiwan's "whole of society" resilience doctrine is starting to draw interest from other democracies facing threatening authoritarian neighbors, notably the Baltic states in relation to Russia. The principles of civilian mobilization, strategic stockpiles and psychological preparation of the population find direct echoes in current European security debates.

This international circulation of resilience doctrines illustrates a broader realization: 21st-century national defense is no longer confined to conventional military capability, but engages the entire social and economic fabric of a threatened nation.

A signal sent well beyond the Taiwan Strait

By publicly documenting its exercises and openly owning its defensive posture without rhetorical detour, Taiwan also sends a signal to other democracies closely watching how a technologically advanced but numerically outmatched island can structure credible deterrence against an overpowering authoritarian neighbor.

This signal reaches well beyond the bilateral China-Taiwan framework: it stands as a case study for any democratic nation living under the direct threat of an authoritarian neighbor determined to erase its political autonomy.

What 2027 might actually mean

A deadline turned strategic obsession

The year 2027, marking the centennial of the founding of the People's Liberation Army, has become an obsessive benchmark in Western and Taiwanese analyses of the Chinese threat, based on repeated statements by Chinese officials calling for full military modernization by that date.

It should nonetheless be noted with caution that no definitive evidence confirms an invasion is being planned for that specific year, and that this deadline remains largely interpretive, built from official Chinese rhetoric about modernization rather than an explicitly dated invasion plan.

The caution needed around fixed dates

This methodological nuance takes nothing away from the urgency of Taiwan's preparations, but it is a reminder that rigorous journalism must distinguish between a projected military capability and a confirmed invasion intent tied to a precise date, two things Western media coverage sometimes dangerously conflates.

What can be said with certainty, however, is that Taiwan's window for preparation is shrinking as Chinese military modernization advances, regardless of the exact date Beijing might choose to act.

The role of Japan and regional neighbors

Tokyo watches with growing concern

Japan, Taiwan's immediate neighbor and itself engaged in a persistent territorial dispute with China, closely follows every development in Taiwan's defensive posture. Former Japanese officials have repeatedly warned that a crisis in Taiwan would automatically become a crisis for Japanese security, given the geographic proximity of the Sakishima Islands.

This regional interdependence explains why Taiwan's resilience exercises are no longer seen as a strictly bilateral matter between Taipei and Beijing, but as a test of the stability of the entire Indo-Pacific security architecture built over decades around American alliances.

An informal coalition taking shape

Without any formal treaty publicly confirming it, signs of coordination between Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and Australia are multiplying in response to China's growing assertiveness in the region. This informal coalition, still fragile, could prove decisive should Beijing one day decide to test the collective resolve of its democratic neighbors.

It is within this broader context that Lin Fei-fan's statement takes on its full strategic meaning: it speaks not only to Beijing, but to every regional capital watching how Taiwan chooses to tell its own story in the face of the threat.

Conclusion: an island that refuses to take the blame

A narrative reversal that could set a precedent

Lin Fei-fan's July 7, 2026, statement may well be remembered as a turning point in how Taiwan chooses to present itself to the world: no longer as a province awaiting an outside verdict, but as a democracy that documents, justifies and openly owns each of its defensive choices, while placing responsibility for escalation squarely on its true author.

Whether this rhetorical strategy will be enough to durably shift international opinion remains uncertain. But it has the merit of factual clarity, backed by documented exercises, verifiable figures and directly attributed quotes, rather than vague mutual accusations.

What history may remember

If history remembers one lesson from this episode, it may be this: a nation preparing to survive is not the one provoking war, but the one refusing to disappear without having tried everything to avoid it. Taiwan, in 2026, appears to have chosen that path, eyes wide open to the risks it carries.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

My acknowledged biases

I sign this profile as an engaged columnist, not a neutral observer. I believe democracies, including Taiwan, have the right to defend themselves against authoritarian neighbors that threaten their very existence. I regard China as a major strategic threat to the rules-based international order, much as Russia is toward Ukraine.

What I don't know

I have no information confirming a precise date for a Chinese invasion, nor any classified details on the real military plans of Beijing or Taipei. This analysis relies exclusively on public statements and verifiable reporting, with no invention or fabricated testimony on my part.

Sources

Primary sources

Reuters — Taiwan's preparations are not provocation, senior official says, July 7, 2026

Taiwan Ministry of National Defense — official site

Focus Taiwan — politics section

Secondary sources

Reuters — Inside Taiwan's nightmare scenario, July 3, 2026

Axios — geopolitics and security coverage

Military Times — defense and security analysis