Taiwanese war drama Zero Day Attack has become a smash hit: the series, which imagines a Chinese attack on Taiwan, has topped viewer rankings on public television and streaming platforms in the month since its release.
But most of Taiwan’s commercial film industry is watching from the sidelines. After venture capital funds and production companies shunned the politically sensitive script, its creator Cheng Hsin-mei produced the show like an experimental film, with a group of like-minded directors, money from a public film fund and investment from tech billionaire-turned anti-China campaigner Robert Tsao.
The reluctance of Taiwan’s entertainment business establishment to get involved reflects the stark choice it faces between creative freedom and the commercial lure of China, a movie market 30 times the size of its own but one fraught with political taboos.
Taiwanese investors, producers and actors frequently turn down projects that touch on issues sensitive to Beijing authorities because they fear losing out on opportunities in China and even at home, according to more than a dozen people in the industry interviewed for this story.
Steve Wang, co-founder of movie distribution company Activator and chair of the Taipei Film Trade Association, said: “In Taiwan’s entire entertainment world, as long as you have any interests in China, or even just think about future opportunity, no matter if it’s creative workers or companies, this self-limitation is always there.”
One actor who declined to be named said she had decided against taking a role in a Taiwanese film because she feared it might tie her image too closely to local culture, making her unsuitable for future projects intended for distribution in China.
“I would have loved to work with that director,” she said. “But when the Taiwan element in a film is strong, when there is lots of local languages spoken, before you know it the Chinese Communist party calls it ‘advocating for Taiwan independence’.”
With Rmb42.5bn ($5.92bn) in box office revenue last year, China remains the world’s largest movie market, ahead of the US despite a 34 per cent slide compared to its pre-pandemic peak. That is nearly 30 times the size of Taiwan’s NT$6.2bn (US$203mn) box office in 2024 and, combined with much larger funding opportunities and a shared language, makes China hugely attractive to Taiwanese film companies.
But China’s ruling Communist party in effect forbids any content that could be understood as not backing its claim to sovereignty over Taiwan. It also views a broad and continuously changing range of other topics as sensitive. Beijing’s strict censors can force changes to films at the script stage, or during or after production, and sometimes block completed films from release.
It is not only Taiwanese filmmakers who self-censor in anticipation of Chinese sensitivities.
In the 2010s Hollywood studios, eager to tap into the enormous potential of Chinese consumers, began to pre-emptively change plot points, drop references to China or remove potentially sensitive scenes to ensure distribution in the market. Chinese censors cut scenes from Hollywood films ranging from Men in Black 3 and Mission Impossible: 3 to Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.
But in Taiwan, things go much further. Last year, two members of the Zero Day Attack cast were approached for roles in other TV drama projects. After they informed the respective producers of their participation in the war series, which was not public at the time, the offers were pulled. “The logic is that you can be polluted by association,” said one person familiar with the incidents.
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Wang said: “What content any given actor or singer is associated with affects not just themselves but their agents or producers. As agencies would have other people under contract who may be in the Chinese market or aspire to do so in the future, this becomes an extremely complicated affair.”
Once an actor’s career in Taiwan takes off, they would be tempted to try China, Wang added. “And once they learn about the restrictions that requires, they become more and more careful in what they say or do, and many become extraordinarily cautious about work in Taiwan.”
Some Taiwanese film professionals said such caution was undermining their own country, which is consistently ranked as one of the world’s freest societies.
“In Taiwan, we actually have complete freedom in terms of creation,” said Diana Chao, one of the Zero Day Attack directors. “However, whether you get to enjoy that freedom is decided by whether you feel the need to self-censor.”
Many Taiwanese film production companies seek to ensure the people they work with avoid doing or saying anything Beijing could dislike.
Chao said: “If the company is working on projects that will enter the Chinese market, their contracts will contain self-censorship clauses, along the lines that if your political or other public statements cause damage to my interests in the future, I will sue you for compensation.”
For a long time, such caution seemed worth it. China’s move in 2010 to exempt Taiwan from its tight foreign film distribution quotas boosted co-operation between filmmakers from both sides.
Taiwan does not publish comprehensive statistics on film exports to China or on co-productions across the Taiwan Strait. But according to the Taipei Film Commission, a semi-official body that supports film projects in the capital, the number of such co-productions rose steeply for years after 2010. Of the 137 international co-productions the commission supported in 2017, 80 were with China, said commission director Jennifer Jao.
But China has since drastically reduced co-operation. After Taiwanese director Fu Yue used an acceptance speech at the 2018 Golden Horse Awards to say she wished her country could be treated as a “independent entity”, Beijing barred Chinese movies from future participation in the Taiwan-hosted Chinese-language film festival.
“I still hope that we can revive co-operation in film because it can be so beneficial for both sides,” said Jao, who estimated there were now little more than a dozen movie co-productions a year.
Still, China remains a vital market for Taiwan’s film industry. Post-production and special effects companies are most reliant on it, with China accounting for 44 per cent of their foreign revenues, according to the government-backed Taiwan Creative Content Agency. Film producers make 16 per cent of their foreign income from mainland China and 15 per cent from Hong Kong, while distributors have similar ratios — all higher than for any other single market.
As Zero Day Attack shows, Taiwan still has many filmmakers who resist such dependence and the restrictions that comes with it. Cheng, the show’s producer, said she felt extremely moved when eight directors responded to her call to make the series together before she had secured funding.
She said: “Even though there are risks, and we all know that after participating in this drama, we might never work in the Chinese market again, or that our works might not be able to enter the Chinese market, everyone still participated enthusiastically because they are so eager to tell Taiwan’s story.”
Additional reporting by Christopher Grimes in Los Angeles
