What Do Taiwan’s People Think About Its Annual Military Exercises?

Por Kuan-chen Lee — The Diplomat

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Taiwan’s Han Kuang exercises are winning public approval, despite the growing impact on civilians. Understanding is another matter.

Taiwanese soldiers during the 2026 Han Kuang exercises, Aug. 8, 2026.

Taiwan’s annual Han Kuang military exercises were difficult for ordinary citizens to ignore this year. Mobile internet was deliberately slowed for 30 minutes to simulate wartime communications disruptions. Troops barricaded Guangfu Bridge, a key route connecting New Taipei City with the capital, setting up metal barriers and barbed wire as they rehearsed stopping enemy forces from advancing into Taipei. Hospitals also practiced moving medical operations underground as part of exercises designed to keep essential services running during a conflict. These scenes showed how Taiwan’s preparations for a possible war are moving beyond conventional military exercises and increasingly into the spaces of everyday civilian life.

The shift reflects a broader change in Taiwan’s approach to defense. This year’s Han Kuang exercises placed greater emphasis on realistic wartime scenarios while more closely integrating military training with urban resilience exercises. Preparing for a potential conflict is increasingly not only a task for the armed forces, but also a challenge involving civilian infrastructure, local governments, reservists, and ordinary citizens. But as Taiwan brings society more directly into its defense preparations, a basic question becomes more important: What do Taiwanese themselves make of the country’s most important annual military exercise?

To answer this question, the Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR) commissioned a nationwide telephone survey shortly after this year’s exercises. Conducted by National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center from August 20 to 24, the survey interviewed 1,215 adults across Taiwan. Public satisfaction with the Han Kuang exercises reached its highest level in our survey series, yet most respondents said they knew relatively little about what the exercises actually involved. The findings suggest that as Taiwan expands whole-of-society defense, public approval and public understanding should not be treated as the same thing.

Public satisfaction with the Han Kuang exercises reached 60 percent this year, the highest level in our survey series. As shown in the chart below, satisfaction had generally hovered around 50 percent in previous surveys. It stood at 51.9 percent in 2021 and 53.6 percent in 2022, before falling to 45.5 percent in 2023. Satisfaction recovered to 51.3 percent in 2025 (there was no comparable survey in 2024) and rose further this year. The longer-term pattern has therefore fluctuated rather than followed a steady upward trend, but the 2026 result is noticeably higher than the levels recorded in previous surveys.

The figure also shows another shift. The share of respondents who did not offer a clear evaluation of the exercises – whether they chose now to answer or were unaware of the exercises at all – fell from 36.7 percent in 2021 to 25.3 percent in 2026, the lowest level in our survey series, although the decline was not consistent across years. Among those who reached the satisfaction question this year, about three-quarters expressed either a positive or negative view of the exercises. 

These comparisons require some caution because the screening questions and skip patterns were not identical across survey waves. More importantly, being able to evaluate the exercises does not necessarily mean understanding them better. When we asked respondents directly how well they understood the Han Kuang exercises, the results told a different story.

Only 2.3 percent of respondents said they understood them very well and 22.6 percent somewhat well. By comparison, 46.1 percent said they did not understand the exercises very well, while another 26.4 percent said they did not understand them at all. In other words, nearly three-quarters of respondents described their understanding of the exercises as limited.

These findings do not necessarily contradict the relatively high level of satisfaction with this year’s exercises. People can form an overall impression of Han Kuang through news coverage, social media, or the activities they encounter in daily life without knowing in detail what individual drills are designed to test. Satisfaction captures how people evaluate the exercises, but it tells us less about how well they understand their purpose. 

As Taiwan places greater emphasis on whole-of-society defense, the distance between approval and understanding becomes harder to ignore. Citizens are no longer simply an audience observing how well the military performs. They are increasingly expected to understand how society would function under crisis conditions and how civilian preparedness connects to national defense. That makes public understanding more consequential than it was when military exercises were viewed mainly as the work of the armed forces.

Satisfaction, understanding, and preparedness are therefore related but distinct. A citizen can support the Han Kuang exercises without knowing what they are intended to test or how they fit into Taiwan’s broader defense planning. Such support is still valuable. It gives the exercises public legitimacy and suggests that many people see value in continued preparation. But support alone does not tell us whether citizens are better prepared to interpret official instructions, understand disruptions during a crisis, or recognize their own responsibilities. 

Of course, not every citizen needs detailed knowledge of military operations. What is needed is a more basic level of understanding. People should know what the exercises are trying to prepare for, why civilian participation is necessary, and how individual drills connect to the wider goal of national resilience. Public communication should therefore do more than make Han Kuang visible. It should help citizens make sense of what they are seeing. 

For Taiwan, the next challenge is not simply getting citizens to watch Han Kuang, but helping them understand what they are watching and why it matters.

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Taiwan’s annual Han Kuang military exercises were difficult for ordinary citizens to ignore this year. Mobile internet was deliberately slowed for 30 minutes to simulate wartime communications disruptions. Troops barricaded Guangfu Bridge, a key route connecting New Taipei City with the capital, setting up metal barriers and barbed wire as they rehearsed stopping enemy forces from advancing into Taipei. Hospitals also practiced moving medical operations underground as part of exercises designed to keep essential services running during a conflict. These scenes showed how Taiwan’s preparations for a possible war are moving beyond conventional military exercises and increasingly into the spaces of everyday civilian life.

The shift reflects a broader change in Taiwan’s approach to defense. This year’s Han Kuang exercises placed greater emphasis on realistic wartime scenarios while more closely integrating military training with urban resilience exercises. Preparing for a potential conflict is increasingly not only a task for the armed forces, but also a challenge involving civilian infrastructure, local governments, reservists, and ordinary citizens. But as Taiwan brings society more directly into its defense preparations, a basic question becomes more important: What do Taiwanese themselves make of the country’s most important annual military exercise?

To answer this question, the Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR) commissioned a nationwide telephone survey shortly after this year’s exercises. Conducted by National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center from August 20 to 24, the survey interviewed 1,215 adults across Taiwan. Public satisfaction with the Han Kuang exercises reached its highest level in our survey series, yet most respondents said they knew relatively little about what the exercises actually involved. The findings suggest that as Taiwan expands whole-of-society defense, public approval and public understanding should not be treated as the same thing.

Public satisfaction with the Han Kuang exercises reached 60 percent this year, the highest level in our survey series. As shown in the chart below, satisfaction had generally hovered around 50 percent in previous surveys. It stood at 51.9 percent in 2021 and 53.6 percent in 2022, before falling to 45.5 percent in 2023. Satisfaction recovered to 51.3 percent in 2025 (there was no comparable survey in 2024) and rose further this year. The longer-term pattern has therefore fluctuated rather than followed a steady upward trend, but the 2026 result is noticeably higher than the levels recorded in previous surveys.

The figure also shows another shift. The share of respondents who did not offer a clear evaluation of the exercises – whether they chose now to answer or were unaware of the exercises at all – fell from 36.7 percent in 2021 to 25.3 percent in 2026, the lowest level in our survey series, although the decline was not consistent across years. Among those who reached the satisfaction question this year, about three-quarters expressed either a positive or negative view of the exercises. 

These comparisons require some caution because the screening questions and skip patterns were not identical across survey waves. More importantly, being able to evaluate the exercises does not necessarily mean understanding them better. When we asked respondents directly how well they understood the Han Kuang exercises, the results told a different story.

Only 2.3 percent of respondents said they understood them very well and 22.6 percent somewhat well. By comparison, 46.1 percent said they did not understand the exercises very well, while another 26.4 percent said they did not understand them at all. In other words, nearly three-quarters of respondents described their understanding of the exercises as limited.

These findings do not necessarily contradict the relatively high level of satisfaction with this year’s exercises. People can form an overall impression of Han Kuang through news coverage, social media, or the activities they encounter in daily life without knowing in detail what individual drills are designed to test. Satisfaction captures how people evaluate the exercises, but it tells us less about how well they understand their purpose. 

As Taiwan places greater emphasis on whole-of-society defense, the distance between approval and understanding becomes harder to ignore. Citizens are no longer simply an audience observing how well the military performs. They are increasingly expected to understand how society would function under crisis conditions and how civilian preparedness connects to national defense. That makes public understanding more consequential than it was when military exercises were viewed mainly as the work of the armed forces.

Satisfaction, understanding, and preparedness are therefore related but distinct. A citizen can support the Han Kuang exercises without knowing what they are intended to test or how they fit into Taiwan’s broader defense planning. Such support is still valuable. It gives the exercises public legitimacy and suggests that many people see value in continued preparation. But support alone does not tell us whether citizens are better prepared to interpret official instructions, understand disruptions during a crisis, or recognize their own responsibilities. 

Of course, not every citizen needs detailed knowledge of military operations. What is needed is a more basic level of understanding. People should know what the exercises are trying to prepare for, why civilian participation is necessary, and how individual drills connect to the wider goal of national resilience. Public communication should therefore do more than make Han Kuang visible. It should help citizens make sense of what they are seeing. 

For Taiwan, the next challenge is not simply getting citizens to watch Han Kuang, but helping them understand what they are watching and why it matters.

Kuan-chen Lee is an associate research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR), Taiwan. He received his Ph.D degree in political science from National Chengchi University. His research interests include public opinion, political psychology, quantitative methods, and cross-strait relations.

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Fonte: The Diplomat