Taiwan is readying citizens for a Chinese invasion. It’s not going well.

TAIPEI, Taiwan — In the imagined blockade of “Zero Day,” a Taiwanese television drama that will be released next year but is already causing a stir, the Chinese military has encircled Taiwan, cutting it off from the world and plunging the island democracy of 23 million into crisis.

In a 17-minute trailer released last week, the public responds to China’s blockade with a mixture of terror and resignation. Young couples ride bikes past tank convoys on empty streets. Criminal gangs stir up chaos on behalf of Beijing and its territorial claims over Taiwan.

Taiwanese shouldn’t fight and couldn’t win anyway, an influencer tells her followers in the series. “Those who want us to enter the battlefield — they really don’t care about our suffering,” she says.

It may be fiction, but the show’s bleak assessment of Taiwanese readiness to fight touches upon a very real problem facing President Lai Ching-te, who took office in May and whom Beijing considers a dangerous separatist.

The threat from Beijing has intensified as Chinese leader Xi Jinping has declared China’s “reunification” with Taiwan inevitable. He has underscored his willingness to use force to achieve that goal by sending rising numbers of warplanes and navy ships to probe the island’s defenses.

Taiwan’s government has been trying to improve its defenses by extending mandatory military service and revamping ongoing training for reservists as part of a broader shift in defense strategy designed to make Xi think twice before taking a gamble on use of force.

But young Taiwanese are not answering the call, and Defense Minister Wellington Koo recently acknowledged a lack of equipment and instructors has slowed attempts to professionalize reservist training.

“I must honestly say that we need to quickly strengthen [training] as there is still a lot of room for improvement,” he told the legislature in June.

Such admissions may concern Donald Trump, who has signaled a more transactional approach to American support for Taiwanese defense if he is reelected president in November.

Taipei wants to create a professional backup force to support 155,000 active-duty soldiers. All Taiwanese men born in or after 2005 are now required to enlist for a year of service, while some 2 million former soldiers are supposed to complete refresher training every two years.

But officials have acknowledged being behind schedule with plans to teach reservists and draftees how to supplement front-line troops in the event of a war. Only 6 percent of eligible conscripts — 6,936 people — took part in the newly implemented 12-month program this year. Most deferred military service to first attend university, meaning the 2005-born intake cohort won’t be fully trained until 2027.

Those doing military service this year are not undergoing the anticipated training. A select group of one-year conscripts were supposed to be learning to use drones, Kestrel antitank rockets and surface-to-air Stinger missiles but there were not enough trainees this year to begin the training, according to a Defense Ministry officer.

Taiwan’s slow progress on boosting training concerns military experts in both Washington and Taipei, who are urging authorities to move faster to deter Xi and prevent a war.

“The last thing that Taiwan wants is for Xi Jinping, as the key decision-maker in China, and for the United States, as the key ally of Taiwan, to doubt Taiwan’s commitments to its own defense,” said Matt Pottinger, who was U.S. deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration and is now a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

To do that, Pottinger said, Taiwan needs the political will and foresight to dedicate some of its best military officers to recruitment and instruction. “I’m really hoping that Taiwan makes these sacrifices,” he said.