Taiwan to merge war games and urban survival tests in drill to prepare people for a China invasion

Taiwan will be holding its largest annual military exercise next week and will, for the first time, combine conventional war games and urban survival drills under “unprecedented” live-fire conditions to be prepared for an invasion by China. The measure signals growing fear in Taipei that Beijing could trigger a prolonged conflict requiring both military defence and civilian resilience.
The 41st Han Kuang exercise, scheduled from July 9 to 18, would test joint operational readiness under “unprecedented 10-day, round-the-clock live-fire conditions”, the Taiwanese defence ministry said on Tuesday.

This year’s edition would incorporate the “whole-of-society resilience” approach, introduced last year by Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te as an updated civil defence model, it said.

The urban drills would feature air-raid warnings, mass evacuations, and critical infrastructure protection to simulate a full-graded response to war.

Major General Tung Chi-hsing, head of the ministry’s joint operations planning division, said that integration of civil defence and national mobilisation is key to Taiwan’s overall resilience.

The simulation will start with cyberattacks or economic coercion and escalate to conflict.

The drills will also test the ability of Taiwanese forces to repel incursions and defend towns and prolonged warfare testing, assessing both military and civilian systems under continuous attack.

Troops will rehearse rapid relocation, backup command activation, and communications blackout protocol, while legal experts will participate in the exercises to ensure the military actions are consistent with international and domestic laws.

The Han Kuang drills will run concurrently with the 35th Tung Hsin national mobilisation drill, and include a full 14-day call-up for reservists, notably the 206th Infantry Brigade.

A major new addition is the “2025 Urban Resilience (Air Defence) Exercise,” which will be coordinated with local governments and take place over July 15 to 18.

Chu Sen-tsuen, manpower mobilisation director of Taiwan’s All-out Defence Mobilisation Office, said the goal of the drill “is to strengthen urban preparedness and validate evacuation, sheltering, and rescue protocols”.

Each region will hold a 30-minute air raid drill, using phone alerts, sirens, TV and radio broadcasts, and loudspeakers.

In the capital, Taipei, plus Taichung in central Taiwan and Tainan in the south, the full 10-day Han Kuang timeline would be compressed into a single-day simulation combining air defence, war-gaming and urban survival tasks.

“Failure to comply with evacuation orders may result in fines of NT$30,000 to NT$150,000 (about US$1,030 to US$5,130) under the Civil Defence Act,” Chu warned.

“By combining conventional combat readiness with civilian preparedness, this year’s Han Kuang marks a turning point in Taiwan’s defense strategy—a whole-of-society effort to endure the worst-case scenario,” said Su Tzu-yun, a senior analyst at the government-funded Institute for National Defence and Security Research.

Beijing, which views Taiwan as part of China, has vowed to pursue unification by force if necessary.

The United States has cited intelligence reports to warn that the PLA may be ready to attack Taiwan by 2027.