For half an hour on Monday, mobile data was throttled across central Taiwan, leaving millions of people unable to stream videos or share photos or make video calls on their cellphones.
The interruption was deliberate: Taiwan was testing, for the first time on a mass scale, how the island might cope if a Chinese attack disrupted its communications.
The activity was part of Taiwan’s annual civil defense exercise, when the government tries to give citizens a sense, albeit a fleeting one, of how they should respond if China tried to seize the self-governed island by force.
The exercise is held in different regions, on different days. On Monday, in Taichung, a city of nearly 3 million people in central Taiwan, the government held an air-raid drill in which sirens were sounded at 2:30 p.m. telling people to seek shelter. Streets emptied as people filed into basements or stayed still in homes, shops, malls and train stations. Then a message flashed on phones across the city.
“Due to simulated air attacks on communications infrastructure, mobile network access will be affected,” it said, reminding residents to switch to fixed-line broadband internet access or indoor Wi-Fi, and listed emergency hotline numbers.
Taichung was one of 14 cities and counties designated for the internet-disruption exercise.
In the LaLaport mall, most shops went dark and closed for the 30-minute drill, while shoppers and diners stayed in place. Some people took naps. Others chatted or played games and watched videos that were already on to their phones.
“I think it’s needed for sure,” said Yu Chun-hsuan, a dental nursing student sitting in the mall’s food court. “Nowadays we’re all so attached to our phones. If there’s a war or something, they really might resort to cyber warfare or cutting communications.”
The government of President Lai Ching-te has stepped up the publicity about this year’s civilian exercises, emphasizing the danger posed by China — which under Xi Jinping has expanded its multitudes of warships, landing vessels and missiles that could support an invasion of Taiwan. Mr. Xi says he hopes to absorb Taiwan peacefully but will not rule out using force.
The exercise cautiously tested a problem that Taiwan sees as central to its defense: how the island would function if its communications with the world were degraded. Taiwan relies heavily on subsea cables for telecommunications and officials have said that commercial ships linked to China have sabotaged cables between Taiwan and some of its outer islands. A broader loss of connectivity could seriously disrupt all of Taiwan, and sow panic.
At the same time, the civil defense drills, held alongside the military’s 10-day annual drills, have become a yearly reminder of how differently people view the threat from China. Some residents in Taichung said that the risk of an attack by China was real and urgent. Others said the chances of war were slim, or that Taiwan’s government was at least partly to blame for the heightened tensions.
“If both sides could get along in peace, there wouldn’t be these high, over-the-top levels of tension,” said Yang Yu-chen, a former soldier, now in his sixties, who owns a store selling children’s shoes.
Huang Chiung-chu, a 70-year-old selling steamed buns at a stall nearby, said China was a dire threat and the drill was the least that the Taiwanese people could do to protect themselves. It was being more strictly enforced than past years, she added, pointing to an instruction sheet that a police officer had handed her.
“Taiwan can’t be too weak, it needs to be a bit stronger,” she said. “Because that way, people won’t look at us as a little country and try to annex or bully us.”
Part of the annual military drill appears to be to reassure the public that the island can defend itself.
On its first night, last Wednesday, Taiwanese military police simulated whisking Mr. Lai to safety from a simulated attempt by Chinese forces to “decapitate,” or eliminate, him. Television footage showed troops escorting him out of the presidential building and into a convoy of armored vehicles that rushed him through empty streets to an underground command center.
The bigger question is how Taiwan’s population would react during a real invasion or blockade. A 30-minute drill offers only a brief picture, but for some residents it helped them feel more mentally prepared.
“The cost we bear from an exercise like this isn’t that high, and if we really have a situation like war, I would then be a little better equipped to handle it,” said Liao Mei-hsiu, a pig farmer who was at the food court in Taichung during the drill, eating ice cream with her husband and their four-year-old daughter.
The government also sought to avoid stirring panic, or seriously disrupting business, and held the drill after Taiwan’s stock exchange closed for the day. Later on Monday, the city government said the drill went well and that calls to the emergency hotline and fire brigade had not been disrupted.
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