‘This is seriously bold’: How China turned Taiwan tensions into a top-rating TV spy drama

After shaking off the people trailing her through a crowded market and emerging from a bathroom in disguise, the double agent appears to have escaped. But a sip of water on a plane eventually gets her. She is poisoned after Taiwan’s military intelligence service discovers that she has been working secretly for China.

The plot comes from a new Chinese spy drama co-produced by the Ministry of State Security. Since its premiere on 6 September, it has become a TV hit, with a fictionalised take on a subject rarely treated so directly: the modern history of tensions with Taiwan.

The series, which will run for 40 episodes, is officially titled The Long Watch in English or Jiaofeng, meaning clashing or “crossing swords” in Chinese. It follows two decades of spies, double agents and intelligence operations between China and Taiwan from the mid-1990s.

Jiaofeng mixes fictional characters and locations with real ones such as Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. Yet it remains difficult for analysts to verify how closely the drama follows real events as new episodes continue to be released.

While Taiwan’s intelligence services are portrayed as an adversary capable of obtaining sensitive missile information, the drama casts Chinese state security officers as the heroes defending the country against infiltration and theft.

By making these dramas, Chinese authorities are “essentially creating their own historical narrative,” says Li Fu-chung, a historian at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University whose research includes Chinese Communist party history and film history. “Through a dramatic format, people can very easily be brainwashed, not only in China but potentially in Taiwan as well.”

Billed as drawing on declassified national-security cases, the series’ writers said they interviewed retired state-security officers and studied 27 case files while developing the script.

Within about a week of its premiere, the series topped the daily prime-time drama ratings on China Central Television five times. Online, it surpassed 50m views across platforms within a week, according to Chinese entertainment data provider Maoyan.

Chinese viewers have described the series as unusually “bold” for addressing real political figures and depicting details of espionage operations on both sides.

“One reason China has been making more dramas on this subject in recent years is simply that espionage makes for good drama. Another is that they want to emphasise patriotism,” says Li.

“Since the story involves Taiwan trying to turn Chinese officials into agents, there will be negative and positive characters. That contrast helps show who is patriotic and who is betraying the country,” Li adds.

Spies, lies and cross-strait tensions

Set in 1994, the first episode opens with a newsreader’s voice playing over a cityscape in China, reporting that Taiwan’s then president Lee Teng-hui had made remarks that “incite separatist sentiment” and “undermine the foundations of cross-strait relations”.

“This is seriously bold!!! It’s exciting from every angle and really doesn’t shy away from anything,” one Chinese viewer wrote on the microblogging platform Weibo, surprised at the direct mention of Lee.

Taiwan, formally known as the Republic of China, is a self-governed democracy that Beijing claims as its territory despite never having controlled the island.

Lee, who later became Taiwan’s first directly elected president, was viewed by Beijing as a major “separatist”. His visit to the United States sparked Chinese missile tests and military exercises that developed into the 1995-96 Taiwan strait crisis, during which the US sent aircraft carrier groups to waters near the island.

Jiaofeng, however, is not the first state-backed Chinese spy drama to draw on cross-strait relations. Last year, another TV series called Silent Honor, also made with guidance from the Ministry of State Security, portrayed espionage set against the backdrop of the end of the Chinese civil war.

Despite the historical narratives, the shows help play into current events. In a commentary about Jiaofeng, published on 8 September, the state-run Global Times described cross-strait espionage as a “hidden front” and said “the struggle on this front will only truly end when the complete reunification of the motherland is achieved.”

On Chinese social media RedNote, one user posted a video saying the drama had taught him a hard lesson about the spy game. “One moment of misplaced trust, one casual conversation or one flash of greed could be enough to pull you into the whole trap,” he said.

‘This is just propaganda’

So far, however, the drama appears to have caused barely a ripple in Taiwan.

Little discussion is evident across social media, despite the series being available there through Chinese streaming service Tencent Video and on YouTube.

Last year, Taiwan’s own drama about cross-strait security threats performed strongly, becoming the most-watched drama of the year. The government-subsidised series Zero Day Attack imagined a Chinese blockade and invasion, with storylines involving sleeper agents and media infiltration.

Annie Hsieh, a 26-year-old Taiwanese postgraduate student, has never heard of Jiaofeng; nor would she be interested in watching it, given the topic. “Who knows what they’ve made out of it,” she says.

Another Taiwanese graduate, Liang Tian-jun, says Chinese romance dramas were more popular among his peers, but that “watching dramas wouldn’t make them feel more open or receptive towards China”.

A poll conducted last month found that only 7.4% of Taiwanese respondents had a favourable view of the Chinese Communist party, down from 9.6% in July.

“Taiwan is, after all, an open and free society, so some people will be influenced by propaganda from across the strait,“ Li says, “But most Taiwanese can see that this is just propaganda.”