Doubting America Is Not the Same as Surrendering: The Two Faces of Taiwan's Youth, and a Dangerous Cycle

Look closely at the data, and what Taiwan's youth actually want is quite clear: maintaining the status quo, and the way of life that the status quo protects. The same poll shows that as many as 67.4% worry that "if the status quo can't be maintained, they will lose their current way of life and rights"; only fewer than 9% actually worry about "the country's name being changed" ^[7]. They doubt the reliability of the United States as a security partner, but that doesn't mean they want to be unified with China or give up resistance — caught between the U.S. and China, what Taiwan's young people want most is simply for "everything to stay the same" ^[2]. Multiple studies point out that Taiwan's youth are not defeatist ^[4].

More intriguingly, as many as 61% say Taiwan should "stay equidistant and remain neutral" between the United States and China, rather than leaning entirely toward either side (^[7], survey; pending verification). This shows Taiwan's youth aren't naively tilting toward China — they're wary of "handing their fate to any single great power." "Doubting America," "resisting China," and "maintaining the status quo" all coexist within this same group of young people.

Their doubts about America are less a product of brainwashing than a rational judgment made after watching Trump's transactional diplomacy (see "Transactional Ambiguity") and watching an arms sale get suspended and treated as a "bargaining chip" — they distrust the idea of "having their fate decided by a great power." Equating "doubting America" directly with "surrendering to China" doesn't just misread the data — it's tantamount to fighting a round of cognitive warfare on Beijing's behalf.

Responding to doubts about America requires first acknowledging that they didn't come out of nowhere. Taiwan youth's doubts about America rest on at least three visible, real-world foundations.

First, Trump's transactional diplomacy: when a U.S. president openly calls arms sales to Taiwan a "bargaining chip," and suspends a US$14 billion arms package after a Trump-Xi summit (see "Transactional Ambiguity"), it's hard to ask young people to "believe unconditionally." Second, the precedent of "abandoning allies": America's wavering support for Ukraine and its pressure on other allies have been watched closely by Taiwan, naturally prompting the question, "Could I be next?" Third, the feeling of being treated as an "ATM": a chip investment of 250 billion, pushing defense spending to 5%, and demands that have even reached as high as 10%, have left more than a few people feeling that "after paying this much, we still don't get a clear guarantee in return."

Put these three points together, and doubting America is no longer as simple as "being brainwashed by the Chinese Communist Party" — it's the reasonable response of a well-informed generation to the reality in front of it. Acknowledging that reasonableness is the starting point for dialogue; denying it, or slapping labels on it, will only push young people further away.

The real trouble with doubting America is that it is highly polarized along party lines.

The same survey shows that about 63% of KMT supporters and 59% of TPP supporters doubt the U.S. would come to Taiwan's aid, while 67% of DPP supporters believe it would ^[1]. As a result, "is America actually reliable" — a question that should be debated on the facts — has been split into blue and green halves, and every discussion of it easily turns into a battle of positions rather than a calibration of facts.

And the fact is: whether the U.S. would come to Taiwan's aid was never a "yes" or "no" question — it's a spectrum of probability, depending on the U.S. president of the moment, Congress, domestic public opinion, and Taiwan's own preparedness and value to Washington. Simplifying it to either extreme is dishonest. When a society can only argue about "whether an ally is reliable" along party lines, it loses the ability to coolly assess risk and rationally allocate defense resources — and that is exactly what an adversary most wants to see.

The generational divide over doubting America also lands concretely on one specific issue: military service.

Starting in 2024, conscripts born after 2005 are required to serve a full year of mandatory military service (restored from the previous four months). The first cohort of one-year conscripts has already completed their training in stages; in terms of public opinion, most people actually support the extended service term ^[6]. But the devil is in the details: low morale on the ground within the conscription system, and the controversy over some young people going to great lengths to "dodge the draft," have opened up a fault line of "generational fairness" — when some people shoulder a full year of obligation while others manage to evade it through various means, "who should sweat for this island" becomes a stinging question.

This fault line is further intertwined with young people's dissatisfaction with the government. Polling shows that among people aged 20 to 29, only about 23% are satisfied with President Lai Ching-te's administration, while 52% are dissatisfied, revealing a strong appetite for "change" ^[6]. For a generation that is dissatisfied with the status quo and is being asked to shoulder more defense obligations, their doubts about America therefore also carry a layer of generational sentiment that asks, "why me?"

If doubting America isn't the same as surrendering, then where exactly is the risk? The answer lies in a finding that scholars have repeatedly confirmed: a person's will to fight rises significantly when they believe outside help is coming ^[3].

Connect this finding to the trend of doubting America, and a dangerous cycle emerges:

Doubting America → feeling that "no one will help if fighting starts" → declining will to fight → declining support for the defense budget, military service, and civil defense → declining Taiwanese deterrence → a widening window of opportunity for China.

This is "self-fulfilling fragility" — doubting America by itself won't make Taiwan lose, but if it erodes Taiwan's investment and will in its own defense, it will, step by step, turn "won't be attacked" into "worth a try." It's the same problem seen from a different angle as the budget gridlock in "5% for Defense" and the stalled transformation described in "Porcupine on Paper": when a society loses confidence or consensus about self-preservation, no amount of weapons procurement will escape being discounted by the pull of politics and public opinion. This — this is the real issue.

The two red teams converge here: the Eastern Eye says, "doubting America has a real basis — don't stigmatize young people"; the Western Eye says, "the motivation is understandable, but the consequences are structural." Both sides are right — and precisely because of that, the solution cannot be moralizing.

That doubting America has a real basis doesn't mean it isn't being manipulated. What the Chinese Communist Party's cognitive warfare (see "The Complete Atlas of the Gray Zone" and "War Psychology") does best is precisely "borrowing force to strike": it doesn't need to fabricate anything out of thin air; it only needs to add fuel to the doubt about America that already exists in Taiwan and push it to an extreme, amplifying "America may not be reliable" all the way into "America will definitely abandon Taiwan, so resistance is pointless." This is exactly the trilogy of "the doubt-America thesis, the abandon-Taiwan thesis, and the defeatism thesis" that the united-front system actively pushes. Experts have also warned that some young Taiwanese people's awareness of the China threat is actually quite low, which gives cognitive warfare exactly the opening it needs ^[8].

This is why it's so important to distinguish "healthy doubt about America" from "manipulated defeatism." The former is clear-eyed — it pushes Taiwan to pragmatically strengthen itself and not bet its fate entirely on someone else. The latter is paralyzing — it leads a society to abandon its will to resist before the first missile even lands. The same phrase, "America is unreliable," can lead to "so I need to work harder to defend myself," or it can lead to "so we might as well give up" — and the adversary is fighting hard to push you toward the latter.

The right way to respond to doubts about America is not to ask young people to "believe America will definitely come" — that would be neither honest nor persuasive, especially when even the U.S. president himself treats arms sales as a bargaining chip.

The right answer is to flip the causality around: build Taiwan's own resilience to the point that "Taiwan can hold on even if outside help is uncertain." Once asymmetric combat capability, civil-defense resilience, and supply-chain security (exactly what the "Porcupine on Paper," "Undersea Cables," and "De-Risked Supply Chain" series discuss) are made solid enough, young people's confidence in "maintaining the status quo" no longer needs to rest on an external promise they never trusted in the first place.

Rather than spending effort trying to "repair trust in America" (which is, to a large extent, out of Taiwan's hands), it's better to spend that same effort "building trust in itself" (which is entirely within Taiwan's hands). Making the status quo an option Taiwan can defend on its own — that is the key to breaking the fragility cycle.

This generation's doubt about America actually conceals a healthy potential: it represents a generation that is no longer dependent and is beginning to want to rely on itself, coming of age. The only question is whether this energy of "not wanting to depend on others" gets channeled toward "self-strengthening" or toward "lying flat."

Channeling it toward self-strengthening requires "visible results": when young people see asymmetric combat capability genuinely being built, civil defense genuinely being popularized, and critical infrastructure genuinely being reinforced, their confidence that "Taiwan can hold the line" shifts from an abstract slogan into a concrete judgment. Conversely, if all they see is budgets stalling in the Legislative Yuan, reform crawling at a snail's pace, and politicians blaming each other, then no amount of "resist China, protect Taiwan" sloganeering will do anything but deepen the sense of helplessness that "it's useless anyway." Winning back this generation doesn't depend on louder patriotic education — it depends on more solid results in self-defense. Action, not words, is the most powerful response to doubting America.

The state: Treat "doubting America" as a public-opinion reality that must be answered head-on, not a label to slap on people. Use verifiable defense resilience to build confidence that "Taiwan can hold the line," dismantling the fragility cycle at its root. At the same time, reform of military service and defense obligations must seriously address "generational fairness" — when young people feel that obligations are being distributed unfairly, even the most legitimate defense needs will lose their support.

Media and social intermediaries: Strengthen media literacy and cross-generational communication to prevent doubting-America/resisting-China from being manipulated into a blue-vs-green confrontation; calibrate with facts — U.S. support is a spectrum of probability, not a yes-or-no question. Every time "ally reliability" is turned into a battle of positions, it saves the enemy's cognitive-warfare operation some work.

The younger generation: Understand that "maintaining the status quo" was never free. The will to fight and investment in resilience are the cost of maintaining the status quo — what this generation needs to defend isn't any political party or any great power, but the way of life it has chosen for itself. Doubting America can be a form of clear-headedness, but don't let that clear-headedness slide into the resignation of "there's no stopping it anyway."

Taiwan's young people have not surrendered — they simply don't want their fate decided by someone else. This distrust can be the starting point of fragility, or it can be the driving force of self-strengthening — the difference lies in whether Taiwan spends its effort calling them "naive," or spends that effort turning itself into the island that "can hold on even if no one comes." The younger generation's doubt about America is less a problem that needs correcting than it is a reminder: what has always truly convinced a generation to stand up for its homeland was never "believing someone else will come to save it," but "believing this place is worth defending, and that it can be defended."