Taiwan is pitching itself to Europe as a partner with hands-on experience surviving constant Chinese pressure — a push for closer ties that is good news for both sides and unwelcome in Beijing.

• Taiwan's representative to the EU, Hsieh Chih-wei, made the case in a European policy outlet that Europe and Taiwan should trade lessons on civil defense and resilience.
• What Europe calls "hybrid" or "gray zone" threats is daily life in Taiwan: Chinese planes and ships circle the island almost every day, and drills keep getting bigger and less predictable.
• Undersea internet cables to Taiwan's outlying islands have been cut repeatedly; after a 2023 outage that left thousands offline for weeks, backup systems kept service running when cables were damaged again this April.
• China is also using law as a weapon — a new "ethnic unity" law that took effect July 1 is written so broadly that publishers, academics and foreign companies tied to the Chinese market may censor themselves just to be safe.
• Taiwan handed out 11 million copies of a civil defense handbook late last year and has folded civilian emergency planning into its main annual military exercise.

Outlook: Expect Taiwan to keep courting European governments on infrastructure protection and fighting disinformation, using shared exposure to Chinese and Russian pressure as the opening.