Analysis: Taiwan Holds First Civil Defense Tabletop Exercise

TaiwanPlus News

Taiwan is upping its civil defense preparations. For the first time, the presidential office is holding a tabletop drill to gauge preparedness for an attack by China. TaiwanPlus speaks with Chen Fang-yu, a political scientist at Taiwan’s Soochow University, to learn more about the country's plans.

Transcript

00:00Taiwan's presidential office is practicing how it would lead a civilian response to an

00:04attack on the country.

00:07For the first time, it's holding tabletop exercises with ministries, local government

00:11officials and private observers, a source with direct knowledge of the matter has told

00:16Taiwan Plus.

00:18President Lai Ching-de set up a committee earlier this year to strengthen Taiwan's civil

00:22defense.

00:23Thursday's exercise involves how to deal with so-called grey zone warfare.

00:30For more on Taiwan's civil defense efforts and the role of the whole-of-society defense

00:35resilience committee, Rick Clowett spoke to Chen Feng-yu, a political scientist at Taiwan's

00:41Suzhou University.

00:43Why does Taiwan need to have a committee like this?

00:46What function does it form for Taiwan?

00:49I think it's very necessary because in the past we see that China is pushing forward

00:55for more coercion on Taiwan.

00:59So we need to speed up all of the military reforms, also to speed up for training for

01:06the whole society.

01:08So because if there is a Taiwan contingency, then it's not only for the jobs of the military,

01:14but also for the whole society.

01:17This is also a sign of the deterrence, because China knows that the whole society is ready

01:25for that, and then it will raise up the cost of using force.

01:31And we understand that the exercise today may be focusing on grey zone warfare.

01:36What sort of threats does Taiwan face in this area, and how can civil resilience face up

01:42to that?

01:43In the past, we see a lot of military exercises by China.

01:47We see a lot of fighter jets and a lot of the traditional military threats to Taiwan.

01:54But we also see that a lot of so-called grey zone activities in recent years, including

02:01using the fishing boats to coerce Taiwanese fishing boats, or to use a lot of different

02:09kinds of methods, like economic coercion, like a blockade, and a lot of different activities,

02:16like including the informational warfare to attack some of the infrastructure of Taiwan.

02:25We need to integrate all of the different sectors of the government, and also to cooperate

02:31with the civil societies.

02:32We know that this issue has been in public debate.

02:36How does Taiwan society feel about this call to face up to the threat from China?

02:41Well, it is a little bit unfortunate that it's still not a widespread consensus that

02:48China is threatening Taiwan.

02:51So this issue, I mean, the defense issue is highly polarized among partisans' debates.

02:58Actually, some of the pro-China opposition parties, they want that we do not talk too

03:06much about these kind of issues, because they fear that we could antagonize China.

03:13I think it is better that we increase our own capability in order to have a greater

03:19capability of deterrence.

03:22So it is also the job of the government to communicate and to persuade people that we

03:29do need this.

03:31We do need to practice.

03:32We do need to know more about the civil defense.

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