# Zero Day (Taiwanese TV series)

Zero Day (Chinese: 零日攻擊; lit. 'Zero day attack') is an upcoming 2025 Taiwanese speculative fiction television series, set against the fictional scenario of a People's Liberation Army invasion of Taiwan.

## Plot

The elderly incumbent president of Taiwan loses to a younger female challenger. As the political transition is underway and inauguration day approaches, a PLANAF Shaanxi Y-8 antisubmarine warfare aircraft goes down in the waters southeast of Taiwan (implied to be an act of surreptitious internal sabotage as part of a false flag operation), with the plane's sole surviving injured crewman being rescued and picked up by a nearby ROCN warship. Under the guise of conducting a search and rescue operation for the missing plane, China implements a naval blockade surrounding Taiwan, leading to the complete halt of international shipping to the island, and a subsequent stock market crash and bank run. The United States and Japan increase their military readiness levels as the Taiwanese military mobilizes in preparation for invasion, with foreign governments starting to evacuate their citizens from Taiwan.
A hybrid warfare campaign begins spreading disinformation through sympathetic influencers on social media to erode Taiwanese morale, while Chinese hackers hijack Taiwan's local broadcast media, using AI-generated deepfakes of the Taiwanese president declaring war on China to deceive Taiwan's citizenry into surrendering. As Chinese infiltrators and their local collaborators release convicts from prisons en masse, armed groups of fifth columnists and gangsters begin blocking roads. As the ensuing chaos progresses, PLAAF commandos make landfall on Kinmen.

## Production

The series was announced at a press conference on July 23, 2024, with the first trailer released on the same day. Preparation for the series began in December 2022, inspired by the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War and the Chinese military exercises around Taiwan conducted in protest of Nancy Pelosi's 2022 Taiwanese state visit. Principal filming commenced in March 2024, with plans to finish by November 2024. The series is supported by the Taiwanese Ministry of Culture's "1 plus 4-T-content plan", and is produced by Zero Day Cultural and Creative Co., Ltd., with funding provided by the Taiwan Creative Content Agency [zh], Chunghwa Telecom, Kaohsiung Film Fund [zh], and Robert Tsao. Cheng Shin-mei (Chinese: 鄭心媚) is the producer and screenwriter of the show, while Lin Shih-ken (Chinese: 林仕肯) serves as executive producer. Filming was also assisted by the Republic of China Armed Forces, with a ROCN warship and real CM-32 armoured vehicles appearing in some scenes.
Director Lo Ging-zim explains that after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he considers Taiwan to be "the most likely next flashpoint... drama is not presenting the truth but metaphor as to how we might react to the challenges in reality", and that Zero Day aims to show the public how to face a potential invasion. The director made the decision to weaken Taiwan's government and society in their portrayal, setting a worst case scenario which they hope to empower the audience to avoid. Lo said “I believe every Taiwanese person has their own version of Zero Day attack in their mind. We were just the first to make it into a series.”
Hong Kong actor Chapman To, who plays the character of "Brother Qiang", a Chinese Communist Party operative, expressed in a media interview that "it is embarrassing to play the role of a Hongkonger sent by the People's Republic of China to infiltrate Taiwan, but acting such a role is not difficult because there are many such people in Hong Kong".

## Release

The series will consist of ten episodes, and is planned to release in May 2025. Each of the episodes will be filmed by different directors.
A 17-minute trailer was released in July 2024 during simulated air raids in Taiwan's Han Kuang Exercise.