Taiwan Resilience and Resistance Operating Concept (T-RROC)
Introduction
Taiwan faces a persistent, dangerous, and illegal threat of invasion from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This article serves as a recommended concept for the Republic of China (Taiwan) to develop its own detailed and actionable Taiwan Resilience and Resistance Operating Concept (T-RROC), ensuring alignment of effort across all parts of society—government, military, civil, and private sectors. The T-RROC should lay the foundation for Taiwan’s deterrent, offensive, and defensive capabilities, given the island’s unique threat from Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Inspired by the Resistance Operating Concept (ROC) developed for Europe, hereafter referred to as the European ROC, the Taiwan Resilience and Resistance Operating Concept contains two complementary lines of effort: (1) resilience and (2) resistance. By asserting itself as a formidable force through T-RROC development and implementation, Taiwan will send the PRC a clear and simple message: do not invade. If the PRC fails to listen, an invasion will be met with widespread, unified, and prolonged resistance, making occupation costly and unsustainable in human, economic, diplomatic, military, and political terms.
Part One: Whole-of-Society Resilience
Resilience is defined as the will and ability to withstand external pressures and influences and/or recover from the effects of those pressures or influences. For Taiwan, resilience must involve multiple dimensions and buy-in from all parts of society. A comprehensive approach to building whole-of-society (WOS) resilience is needed to ensure continuity, stability, and security before, during, and after the outbreak of violence on the island.
Civil Defense and Community Preparedness
Promoting national identity and unity among Taiwan’s citizens is a fundamental building block for resilience. National cohesion helps establish a collective spirit of resistance, complicating PRC efforts to exploit internal divisions—something malign actors are astute at doing. In partnership with academic and civic institutions, the government must aggressively promote a shared national identity that underscores the importance of democratic values, human rights, and Taiwan’s rich cultural heritage.
Initiatives along these lines must be transparent and apolitical, which is admittedly difficult for any society today. Media organizations play a vital role in this process by practicing responsible journalism that promotes unbiased information while countering divisive narratives inserted into society by internal and external malign actors. The messages, messengers, and delivery modes must be tailored appropriately for different target generations within Taiwanese society. Civil society organizations and community leaders must initiate community-level, grassroots outreach programs to foster a sense of shared purpose, mutual respect, and solidarity.
The Civil Defense Office, a part of Taiwan’s National Police Agency, should seek creative ways to be more involved in educating communities on evacuation protocols, emergency response, and resource management. Taiwan’s military, working alongside crisis managers and first responders, should help train citizens in crisis response and understanding organizational roles. Routine civil defense exercises focused on scenarios ranging from natural disasters to outright PRC invasion cultivate a shared understanding of crisis response procedures while strengthening local leadership. These drills also help ensure community members know their roles during emergencies. Any preparation that helps prevent panic and enables more effective community response under pressure is worthwhile.
Cybersecurity, AI, and Information Management
Considering the increased sophistication, quantity, and quality of cyber threats, bolstering Taiwan’s cybersecurity and satellite infrastructure is paramount. The government must collaborate with the private sector beyond its current operating model to protect these and other networked, critical services. Cybersecurity measures must go further, however, and expand beyond government networks to include essential private sector industries such as finance, energy, telecommunications, and healthcare to shield all facets of the economy.
By asserting itself as a formidable force through T-RROC development and implementation, Taiwan will send the PRC a clear and simple message: do not invade.
In conjunction with technical defense, resilience against misinformation is vital. The PRC employs disinformation and misinformation campaigns to create confusion and discord. Misinformation is pushed at increased levels, not just during conflict but also during heightened tensions. Examples of this abound during aggressive and illegal PLA and PLAN military drills around Taiwan following events that anger the CCP. Taiwan’s government and private media organizations must work together to educate the public on identifying misinformation and verifying the integrity of sources in an age of Artificial Intelligence. Public awareness campaigns emphasizing media literacy and critical thinking will cultivate a more informed citizenry. Regulatory frameworks must be adapted to encourage greater transparency in media ownership and to mitigate PRC influence over domestic media outlets to preserve the integrity of Taiwan’s information environment.
Economic Preparedness
Economic resilience is a cornerstone of Taiwan’s national stability, providing financial means to sustain operations and support citizens during crises. Despite significant disruptions, Taiwan’s economy must be robust enough to maintain production, distribution, and essential services during and after conflict. Taiwan’s policymakers must diversify energy, food, and health-related supply chains to minimize dependency on the PRC economy for critical resources. Taiwan’s partners and allies play an essential role in this endeavor.
China increasingly directs coercive economic measures toward Taiwan, like demanding shipping vessels register with the PRC before entering Taiwan, and exercising illegal blockades around Taiwan with PLAN and Coast Guard assets to limit essential resources for the island’s 23.4 million inhabitants should China cut off resupply lanes. Establishing more robust trade arrangements with like-minded partners, including the US, Japan, the EU, ASEAN, and South Korea, can enhance economic stability. Taiwan is undertaking practical steps to increase strategic reserves of essential goods, such as food and energy supplies, and incentivize local production of vital materials. However, on the community level, increased diversification is required on these fronts.
The private sector plays a crucial role in enhancing economic resilience. Businesses, particularly those in essential services such as food, healthcare, and energy, must adopt continuity plans that address supply chain vulnerabilities and potential disruptions. The Taiwan government may stimulate private sector resilience by offering tax incentives or subsidies for local production and resource diversification. Additionally, small and medium-sized enterprises—integral to Taiwan’s economy—should be encouraged to participate in training and preparedness programs that enhance their ability to withstand economic shocks.
Critical Infrastructure
Power, water, transportation, and communication networks must be safeguarded on the critical infrastructure front to ensure functionality during and after conflict. Ongoing infrastructure assessments must identify vulnerabilities that the CCP will try to exploit during conflict. For instance, in the energy sector, efforts to reduce dependence on imported energy sources and expand renewable energy infrastructure, such as solar and wind power, can increase energy independence and mitigate vulnerabilities. Implementing microgrids and distributed energy resources can enhance energy resilience by facilitating localized power generation and distribution. Communication networks must incorporate redundancies to ensure the smooth flow of information during disruptions, enabling coordinated response efforts. The government is currently increasing critical infrastructure protection measures. However, these strategic upgrades and improvements should be prioritized against a broader range of threats, from cyberattacks to elite capture to physical damage/destruction.
Part Two: Resistance
While resilience emphasizes enduring and mitigating the impacts of crises, resistance in the case of Taiwan focuses more specifically on undermining PLA and PLAN forces should they land on the island. Resistance capability is, in fact, a sub-component of whole-of-society resilience. Resistance is defined more precisely in the case of Taiwan as an organized, whole-of-society effort, encompassing the full range of activities from nonviolent to violent, led by a legally established government (potentially exiled, displaced, or shadow) to reestablish independence and autonomy within Taiwan’s sovereign territory that a foreign power has wholly or partially occupied.
Developing resistance capabilities is not a pessimistic admission that assumes occupation is a foregone conclusion. Instead, resistance preparedness serves as (a) an essential deterrent to invasion and (b) fulfills the government’s responsibility to prepare for all possible contingency scenarios – including ones that may be both politically sensitive and unpopular. Furthermore, resistance does not imply nor require total occupation. In the case of a PRC invasion of Taiwan’s sovereignty, PLA and PLAN forces may be successful in some physical or virtual locations and unsuccessful in others as time elapses. Resistance operations may be employed and effective regardless of the PRC’s success in different areas. This reality is another reason why developing resistance capability is a prudent investment.
Capacity vs. Capability
Surveys indicate a significant willingness among Taiwan’s citizens to resist a Chinese invasion. In 2016, a Duke University and National Chengchi University survey revealed that 60.4% of Taiwan’s respondents believed that “the majority of Taiwanese people will fight against China if China invaded Taiwan.” A 2024 survey in the ongoing series indicated that 67.8% of respondents would be willing to fight and defend Taiwan.
In military doctrinal terms, willingness to fight can be understood as capacity. Taiwan may have the capacity to fight in the form of the population’s willingness, just as it has other resources that could be used in conflict, but capacity does not equal capability. Civil society lacks capability without proper planning, training, organizing, and equipping. The military of Taiwan may have both capacity and capability, but the rest of the island may not.
Organizing National Resistance
Taiwan’s resistance movement requires decentralized leadership structures and well-organized networks of civilians. Collaboration between government, military, and civil society is essential for establishing a clear chain of command and communication framework. Taiwan’s military must partner with civilian organizations to facilitate training. Training may include survival skills, information collection, clandestine communication methods, and sabotage, which are but a few crucial elements of resistance. Specific elements of Taiwan’s resistance organization – including the public component (which may take various forms from overt to shadow to exile government), fighting force (often referred to as guerillas), auxiliary, and underground – are outlined here. While great attention is often paid to the fighting force, the other components require equal – if not greater – care, support, and resources since resistance is a slow, costly endeavor that needs sustainment and strong leadership to succeed.
Cell leaders serve as contact points, organizing resistance cells within local communities to ensure knowledge and resources are disseminated among trusted individuals. Each resistance cell is a “cut out” – an element that cannot be directly associated with another element should its members be captured and interrogated for information. Cells must, therefore, be able to operate independently, allowing for continuity of operations even if communication with higher leadership is severed. Distributed organization complicates the PRC invader’s ability to hold and control territory and enables ongoing Taiwanese resistance despite PLA and PLAN efforts to suppress underground leadership. It is imperative that organizational roles for resistance elements – especially among civilians – are determined before a PRC invasion. However, it is not enough just to identify the resistance organization. Exercising these roles in a simulation of PRC occupation with restricted movement is essential. If everyday citizens and the government of Taiwan wait for PLA special forces to parachute onto Taipei-Taoyuan International Airport before they decide to (a) think about and (b) organize resistance operations, the road to freedom becomes exponentially harder – if not impossible – to navigate.
Integration with partner nation conventional and Special Operations Forces (SOF) will complement the effectiveness of Taiwan’s resistance movement. US SOF, which trains with Taiwan in peacetime, also has the specialized mission of supporting insurgency movements. Joint Publication 3-05 outlines Unconventional Warfare as “activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, and guerrilla force in a denied area. Also called UW.” Resistance is an internal, whole-of-society endeavor, while support for resistance comes from external actors.
Utilizing Taiwan’s Geographic and Urban Landscape
Taiwan’s natural geography and urban landscape present unique advantages for resistance operations. The island’s mountainous terrain, dense urban areas, and developed public infrastructure create conditions conducive to delaying and disrupting occupying forces. The military’s defense calculations must incorporate urban warfare training tailored to Taiwan’s terrain.
Civilians should be trained and organized to sabotage PLA and PLAN logistical and communication networks. Familiarity with local infrastructure can be leveraged to disrupt transportation, obstruct supply lines, and interrupt communication systems, complicating the PRC’s efforts to establish control. Local communities can work with the military to strategically pre-position supplies and equipment, allowing resistance cells to operate effectively after an invasion. While pre-positioning supplies and accumulating strategic reserves for resilience may include fuel and food, caching supplies for resistance includes all that, plus weapons, ammunition, cash, and communications equipment. Taiwanese citizens’ agility in navigating their own urban and rural environments gives them a clear advantage in evading detection and subverting PRC activities.
Resistance methods discussed to this point are similar to historical models of World War II resistance operations witnessed across Europe. While still relevant and effective, such models provide limited direction on how Taiwan’s resistance should organize and operate in the 21st century. Taiwan’s citizenry is among the most educated and tech-savvy in the world, but it is not enough to simply have capacity. If trained and organized before the invasion, a tech-enabled, interconnective layer to operations and intelligence can be overlaid on Taiwan’s resistance model. Emerging technologies and Taiwan’s urbanization demand an updated understanding of resistance.
Resistance demands creativity. For example, consider the effectiveness of Taiwan’s leadership telling every citizen that the government will buy each of them a new car after the war if they drive and park their current vehicles on major ground attack routes onto the island to delay PLAN amphibious landings. Before they drop off the car, individuals should put an Apple Air Tag inside to track real-time movement and alert designated officials about when and where assault operations occur. Similarly, the government might offer every amateur drone operator an attractive cash reward for configuring personal drones to drop or crash payloads onto targets in their local communities – which the drone owners know better than anyone. These are just a few examples of creative operations that account for urbanization and technological innovation in resistance for the modern era.
Leveraging Information Warfare
The information domain is as critical as the physical terrain. Taiwan’s resistance must account for controlling and disseminating information that counters narratives from occupying PRC forces. Training civilian resistance cells in information warfare techniques—such as using encrypted messaging platforms, anonymous communication methods, and social media— is essential for maintaining morale, garnering international support, and spreading accurate information about the situation on the ground. The European ROC provides a useful graphic, found immediately below, depicting communications lines and different intended audiences during resilience versus resistance.
Graphic Credit: Resistance Operating Concept, p. 34
Taiwan must work preemptively with international allies today to establish external communication channels that ensure continuity of operations (COOP) with global audiences, even if local networks are compromised. Foreign media and NGOs in Taiwan during peacetime offer a network of international observers who can amplify resistance messages, hold occupying forces accountable, and deter aggressive actions through public naming and shaming. Following the global backlash against Russia’s invasion of a sovereign Ukraine, Xi Jinping is undoubtedly concerned about similar repercussions following his illegal invasion of Taiwan, which clandestine communication networks will expose.
Maintaining International Support
The PRC is making great efforts to seduce individuals and nations around the Indo-Pacific, and the world, to counter Taiwan’s network of international supporters. Successful resistance hinges on maintaining international awareness and support. Again, Ukraine provides clear proof of this idea. Taiwan’s unique status in the international community means that foreign governments that support democratic ideals may assist Taiwanese resistance efforts. To this end, Taiwan should continue to strengthen diplomatic ties and build global support networks today that provide moral, financial, and logistical aid to any potential resistance movement tomorrow.
Taiwan should expand diplomatic efforts to establish agreements with allies, enabling critical supplies, intelligence sharing, and financial support for its resistance strategy. The Taiwanese diaspora must be recruited to advocate for independence on the global stage. This line of effort will help maintain a consistent message that draws international attention to the PRC’s dangerous and illegal occupation. As an example, Ukraine’s persistent efforts in this space, exposing the world to Russia’s illegal invasion and war crimes, was and is arguably more critical to gaining and sustaining support for the war than Ukraine’s fighting itself.
Conclusion: the T-RROC is both a Deterrent and a Defense Tool
The T-RROC blueprint outlines a dual approach that merges resilience and resistance into a modern strategy for protecting Taiwan’s sovereignty. Resilience fosters the societal strength and infrastructure readiness needed to withstand the effects of Xi’s invasion, while resistance provides contingency planning and preparation to make occupation costly and unfeasible.
Building capability after a war has started is infinitely more challenging, as seen in Ukraine. A resilient society does not just have to be about bouncing back after war. Likewise, building a resistance capability now does not mean that Taiwan is conceding defeat before the war ever starts. By developing resilience and resistance capabilities now, a signal is sent to the CCP that it would be foolish to invade in the first place.
Taiwan must, therefore, prioritize building both resilience and resistance capabilities today. This proposition and the resources required to make it a reality are tricky. With finite resources and competing agendas, it is hard to convince politicians and populations to prepare for war and appropriate the needed resources for such preparation if the threat is not right at the door. What lesson is Xi learning from Ukraine? One would hope he would learn from the global response against Russia that the PRC should not attack Taiwan. Policy and diplomacy representatives worldwide are helping to push this narrative to the CCP. Unfortunately, indications are that instead of realizing that the PRC should not invade, Xi is instead focusing on how to attack Taiwan without making the same mistakes that Russia made. For example, one specific lesson from Ukraine that Xi knows is the need to decapitate political leadership immediately. The PRC is learning to invade more effectively, or at least it thinks it is. When authoritarian actors share their future world vision, it is advisable to pay attention since they often try to make dreams a reality. Putin made no secret about his intentions in Georgia, Crimea, and Ukraine. The exact timing and methods were unknown, but the Russian leader’s vision of expansion was shared. Similarly, Xi has transmitted his vision of “reunifying” Taiwan. Putting aside the argument that one cannot “reunify” something that was not previously unified, Xi has shared his beliefs, and the world should listen. This T-RROC suggests that the danger is already on its way to Taiwan’s front (or back) door. Completing, resourcing, and implementing the T-RROC is, therefore, prudent and necessary.
A final note about defensive versus offensive T-RROC activities should be shared. The majority of this document is focused on building a resilient society to bounce back from crisis and to resist occupation. Another key responsibility of government preparation involves calculated, offensive, proactive activities to undermine the CCP’s credibility and capabilities right now as they apply to an invasion of Taiwan. This concept of using offense to defend is a component of integrated deterrence. Offensive activities must be measured and non-escalatory, considering the risk of miscalculation in an era of AI that could lead to unintended conflict. Simultaneously, reacting and responding to malign actions can only be part of the larger strategic equation. Taiwan, the US, and their partners must do everything possible to deter aggression, including implementing proactive irregular measures. Offensive measures aimed specifically at the CCP’s ability to employ malign gray zone tactics can be found here and here.
It is shortsighted to think that defending Taiwan is just about helping Taiwan. Given Taiwan’s geopolitical and technological importance, the negative impact on the global economy that everyone worldwide would feel if the island fell, and the horrible cost that war imposes on humanity, defending Taiwan’s sovereignty is in the interest of all friendly nations. This T-RROC blueprint aims to guide efforts across all sectors of society to ensure Taiwan is prepared to deter, endure, and resist any threats to its sovereignty. By embracing this strategy for resilience and resistance, Taiwan sends a powerful message to the world: any aggression from the PRC will face a united response from the government and the people.
