One day in March or April of an undefined year. Presidential elections have just been held in Taiwan and a democrat is preparing to succeed a liberal. In this time of political uncertainty, the sea currents also favour the triggering of a military landing. Suddenly, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army announces that it has lost contact with one of its planes, a Shaanxi Y-8, which was flying over the south of the strait. Under the pretext of searching the sea for any surviving aviators, China imposes a total blockade on the island, which is de facto independent but which Beijing considers one of its provinces.
Recruitment orders reach Taiwanese youth. Fake news on social media They are doing well, announcing that China has already conquered islets, quickly abandoned by the Taiwanese army, and that the president has fled. The psychological war has begun. A pro-Chinese influencer, while selling ice cream online, tells her followers: “Those who ask you to resist on the battlefield do not care about your lives” urging the Taiwanese population to accept Beijing’s peace.
The complete blockade of commercial ships is paralyzing the economy in a country that exports most of the latest generation of electronic chips. Panic grips financial markets and technology prices plummet, with global repercussions. Islanders are rushing to ATMs and then, soon, to supermarket shelves.
A context of growing tensions
Amid the chaos, the triads long bought by China are releasing their henchmen from prisons. They form groups of collaborators of the Chinese regime, who confront partisans defending the island, its values and its democracy at newly built checkpoints. Hacker viruses and sabotage operations cause water and electricity cuts. In a solemn televised address, the outgoing president calls for unity and resistance: “Without freedom, Taiwan is not Taiwan.” When the Taiwanese Navy interviews a survivor of the Chinese plane they saved at sea, they understand that the explosion occurred inside the plane and that the operation was organized from scratch to prepare the ground, a week before the real invasion, “day zero”.
This dark scenario is still only a fiction of ten episodes, each of them entrusted to a different director, but even before its complete broadcast, scheduled for 2025, it is causing a lot of noise in Taiwan, in a context of growing tensions with China. the series Day Zero It is about this week when the country falls into war. The mere release of a full-length trailer at the end of July sparked a highly political controversy. Since then, the seventeen-minute trailer has been viewed more than 1.7 million times on YouTube.
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