Taiwan's Urban Resilience Drills Evolve to Counter China's Coercive Efforts

Taiwan's urban resilience drills are becoming a crucial component of its deterrence strategy, as the country prepares to counter China's coercive efforts short of an invasion.

The central issue is not whether Taiwan can identify essential national assets, such as hospitals, ports, and communication networks, but whether it can preserve their functions in a crisis scenario. Taipei is increasingly preparing for this broader problem, with Taiwan's 2026 urban-resilience exercises further integrating local government, hospitals, transport networks, emergency responders, critical infrastructure operators, and military forces into shared wartime scenarios.

The 2026 drills tested evacuation and sheltering, traffic control, emergency response, civil-military coordination, and simulated mobile-network degradation in 14 central and northern jurisdictions. The format expanded from one day to two, used shared civilian-military scenarios, and tested cross-jurisdictional coordination. It also included underground medical operations, medical evacuation, joint transportation, and drone-enabled supply.

A Taiwan crisis would move through roads and ports, hospitals and pharmacies, electrical substations, and communications networks. At the heart of resilience are local emergency centers, which will decide which vehicles can move, which facilities receive power, and where people are directed to shelter.

During the August 6-7 Kaohsiung-Pingtung urban resilience exercise, officials combined a tabletop exercise with practical drills on organizing evacuations, distributing essential goods, protecting critical infrastructure, and opening first-aid and relief stations. The city government conducted exercise activity in 12 administrative districts and at 10 critical infrastructure sites.

The drill illustrated that resilience depends less on any single asset than on the ability of several institutions to coordinate actions quickly when normal systems fail. At Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital, the exercise simulated medical load reduction to rehearse sustaining medical care when critical infrastructure is damaged.

A hospital facing a mass-casualty event, disrupted transport, or an attack on nearby infrastructure must preserve a defined package of functions. The standard should not be whether it owns a generator or possesses basement space but whether it can both activate and sustain medical care.

A generator has little operational value if it lacks fuel, a tested transfer system, maintenance, spare parts, operators, protection, and a priority list for supported loads. Likewise, an underground medical site is not a functioning alternative hospital merely because it is underground. It requires ventilation, water, sterilization, oxygen, patient routing, records, communications, staffing, security, and a way to receive and transfer patients when normal roads or receiving facilities are unavailable.

The Kaohsiung drill is therefore a useful first step, but it should lead to more measurable questions across Taiwan's cities: How long can critical functions operate on backup power? Who can activate an alternate site? What triggers a reduction in routine medical care? How are patients directed if a hospital loses digital records or road access? How are pharmacy and blood supplies replenished under disrupted conditions?

Separately, the Qianzhen District Disaster-Prevention Coordination Center in Kaohsiung held urban resilience drills. CNA reported that the center organized civil resources and community-resilience groups into evacuation, shelter, and supply-management teams; it also rehearsed support for a relief station after a simulated bombardment in the Caoya area.

The relevant institutions were in the room for the drill, but that alone is not enough. The challenge is determining whether they have a common operating picture, an agreed-upon decision-making process, alternative communications, and clear legal authority when conditions become contested.

In practice, a crisis would force decisions over road access, fuel allocation, hospital activation, supply priorities, and the use of civilian facilities. These decisions have to be lawful, fast, and able to be made when communications are incomplete and the initial plan has already failed.

This area is where Taiwan's next exercises should become more demanding. Rather than assessing whether each agency participated, they should measure time to activate alternate care; time to reroute ambulances and military logistics after route loss; backup-power endurance; time to establish a relief site; and the ability to issue corrective public information during network degradation or false reports.

Taiwan's civilian resilience is an operational condition for deterrence. Military aid, resupply, and crisis coordination will have limited utility if Taiwan's hospitals, power systems, logistics networks, communications, and local authorities cannot receive, direct, and sustain them.

Han Kuang 42 does not prove that Taiwan can sustain a prolonged cross-strait conflict. A scheduled, two-day exercise cannot establish whether local authorities, infrastructure operators, hospitals, and military forces can function through repeated strikes, degraded networks, fuel constraints, damaged roads, and staff exhaustion. However, Han Kuang 42 does represent a meaningful change. Civil preparedness is being treated less as a post-strike humanitarian issue and more as part of the operational environment in which Taiwan's forces would have to move, communicate, sustain themselves, and fight.

War games often test whether Taiwan can resist military aggression from China. The real question is whether an adversary can break Taiwan's capacity to govern and function before Taipei and its partners can organize an effective response.

## Taiwan's Urban Resilience Drills: Key Takeaways

| Exercise | Duration | Format | Scenarios | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 2026 Urban-Resilience Exercises | 2 days | Shared civilian-military scenarios | Evacuation and sheltering, traffic control, emergency response, civil-military coordination, simulated mobile-network degradation | | Kaohsiung-Pingtung Urban Resilience Exercise | 2 days | Tabletop exercise with practical drills | Organizing evacuations, distributing essential goods, protecting critical infrastructure, opening first-aid and relief stations | | Qianzhen District Disaster-Prevention Coordination Center | | | Evacuation, shelter, and supply-management teams, support for a relief station after a simulated bombardment |

## The Future of Taiwan's Urban Resilience Drills

Taiwan's urban resilience drills are becoming a core part of its deterrence strategy, focusing on preserving critical functions and institutions in the face of China's coercive efforts. The country's next exercises should become more demanding, measuring time to activate alternate care, time to reroute ambulances and military logistics after route loss, backup-power endurance, time to establish a relief site, and the ability to issue corrective public information during network degradation or false reports.