Taiwan's Civil Defense Gaps Exposed Amid Rising China Pressure

Read The Diplomat, Know The Asia-Pacific Conventional deterrence alone overlooks the vector of conflict most likely to define a cross-strait crisis: civil defense. A scene from Taipei’s 2025 Urban Resilience Exercise, the civil defense portion of the Han Kuang exercise, July 17, 2025. Deterrence has been a consistent national priority for Taiwan amid the intensifying pressure from China, which frames reunification with Taiwan as an essential component to the Chinese Communist Party’s goal of national rejuvenation, nominally targeted for 2049. Taiwan’s deterrence strategy relies heavily on U.S. arms sales, security assistance, and military technology cooperation. Conventional deterrents are necessary: F-16V fighters, Indigenous Defense Fighters, and Patriot missile systems prevent adversarial air superiority; Hsiung Feng anti-ship missiles, sea mines, and Harpoon Coastal Defense Systems repel amphibious invasions; ground forces and HIMARS batteries help blunt, endure, and counter an initial attack. Conventional capabilities are acquired and designed to make military advances prohibitively costly for China. However, conventional deterrence alone overlooks the vector of conflict most likely to define a cross-strait crisis: civil defense. Chinese tactics in economic coercion are well-documented, Taiwan’s submarine cable network remains vulnerable to sabotage, and Beijing maintains a cognitive warfare apparatus designed to disinform and manipulate Taiwanese public opinion. These challenges cannot be dealt with purely militarily; they require robust civil defense that resists unconventional ruptures to the continuity of life and develops societal preparedness to withstand crises. The establishment of the All-Out Defense Mobilization Agency, the introduction of “whole-of-society resilience” in official rhetoric, and civilian resources pointed at a military invasion illustrate how civil defense is prioritized within Taiwan’s defense strategy. Yet, Taiwan’s current civil defense capabilities remain insufficient due to fragmented preparedness initiatives, uneven civil-military coordination, and domestic political stagnation. Today, protracted conflicts necessitate building resilient civil defense capabilities to withstand technologically superior adversaries. Ukraine’s sustained resistance to Russia’s invasion demonstrates that credible civil defense raises the cost of war for the aggressor and complicates an adversary’s expectation of quick and decisive victory. Learning from the Russia-Ukraine War and South Korea, Taiwan can apply their logic to its unique geography and threat profile to raise the cost of coercion and deny Beijing’s expectations of a swift conflict, kinetic or otherwise. Status Quo Shortcomings Civil society organizations currently drive much of the civil defense activity within Taiwan. Groups like Kuma Academy and Forward Alliance train citizens in evacuation planning, open-source intelligence techniques to counter disinformation campaigns, and first aid. The aim is to prepare civilians to respond to kinetic conflict, with courses on causality care and supply reserves, while also increasing public awareness of provocative actions under the threshold of war – gray zone activity – against Taiwan. While still new, these groups have grown quickly: Forward Alliance’s waitlist grew past 1,000 people shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and both organizations saw sustained demand amid consistent Chinese military exercise near the island, indicating growing support within Taiwan’s own populace to advance such initiatives. However, these efforts operate largely apart from government funding and integration. A major source of funding for Kuma Academy, for example, has been private philanthropy, with over US$31 million donated by businessman Robert Tsao in 2022. Taipei has pledged a “whole-of-society” defense approach, a framework that seeks to integrate government and civil-society capacity across five areas: civilian training, strategic material stockpiling, critical infrastructure, social welfare and evacuation readiness, and communications network security. Taiwan’s leaders are concerned about China’s ability to disrupt the island’s internal and external communications systems and internet connectivity, emphasizing the importance of a strong, preemptive civil-military coordination. Taiwan already maintains a comprehensive legal framework for civilian defense in the Civil Defense Act, enacted in 2001 and last amended in 2021; the issue lies in implementation. Under Article 2, the law establishes a nationwide civil defense structure, ranging from municipal to village-level units, with special corps for critical infrastructure and mandating training in evacuation, disaster rescue, and support of military tasks. However, legislative review indicates only between 2 and 13 percent of local civil defense budgets are earmarked for tactical training. Taiwan also has an extensive shelter network; yet a lack of accessibility, maintenance, and emergency provisions bring into question their wartime utility. Civil defense reform is also stalled by domestic partisan division. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has moved to formalize resilience efforts, but the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) has protested these efforts as “militarization” of daily life, stalling progress. Lessons From South Korea South Korea, which resumed its annual large-scale civil defense drills in 2023 after a six-year hiatus, illustrates how civil defense can be institutionalized for civilian populations. The country uses an all-hazards resilience framing based on the Framework Act on the Management of Disasters and Safety; it does not explicitly set preparedness in the context of wartime contingencies. Certain competencies, such as evacuation planning and critical infrastructure protocols, are readily transferable from disaster management to conflict scenarios. South Korea also maintains a Civil Defense Corps, comprising men aged 20 to 40, who have completed their mandatory military service. Required hours of training scale down based on years of service. The Civil Defense Corps maintains the dual function structure: in wartime, reservists are trained to guide evacuations, conduct rescue operations, and respond to biological and chemical accidents; in peacetime, they assist in disaster response that entail similar protocols. This model provides consistent exposure to citizens that institutionalizes civil defense in a low-stakes environment while normalizing procedures in public consciousness. Taiwan can also learn from civil defense challenges in South Korea. For one, Seoul only announced plans for its first CBRN-resistant bunkers in 2025, targeting 2028 completion. That means current shelter infrastructure does not match the adversary’s offensive capabilities. Also, the South Korean populace regularly neglects civil defense drills because many lack the perception of an imminen