The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) revisionist attempts to mischaracterize post-World War II documents to bolster its claims over Taiwan are just the most recent reminder of Beijing’s ongoing attempts to forge a narrative to its own benefit.
The government should be doing more to push back against these attempts. In addition to expanding the formats and forums in which it presents Taiwan’s stance, including at the parliamentary and subnational levels, it also needs to identify different needs and tailor its messaging accordingly.
Mor Sobol, an associate professor in Tamkang University’s Department of Diplomacy and International Relations, wrote yesterday (“Public diplomacy must improve,” Sept. 24, page 8) that government-led efforts thus far have focused on developing the “brand” of Taiwan to increase the nation’s profile abroad to promote its soft power. While he approves of these approaches, he writes that these in themselves are insufficient, and other core aspects of public diplomacy — policy advocacy and strategic narrative building — have been neglected.
A Taipei Times editorial last month (“Taiwan’s image in central Europe,” Aug. 13, page 8) quoted a report by the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS), a transnational think tank that has a presence in Taiwan, titled Echoes and Resistance: China’s Discourse Power and Public Perceptions in Central Europe. The report explored how the CCP has been using official channels and influencers to shape perceptions of China and its claims over Taiwan in four central eastern European nations: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
The report said that the public in those countries had favorable opinions about Taiwan and were suspicious of China, but that “strongly agree” or “strongly disagree” constituted proportionally small bands at either end of the spectrum, and that the majority of responses were noncommittal, taking up a large section in the center. The editorial concluded that the government should see the findings as an opportunity to work to change those noncommittal opinions into ones more educated about what Taiwan is and what it has to offer.
On Sept. 1, the CEIAS published a follow-up report, titled Friends With Limitations: Central European Public Attitudes Towards Taiwan in 2025, which largely agreed with the findings of the previous report.
According to both reports, public opinion of Taiwan is favorable across all four countries, a situation that has improved since 2020. It is “significantly more positive” than attitudes toward China. There is also a lack of agreement with Beijing’s narrative that Taiwan is an “inseparable part of” China.
These results are encouraging, but there remains much scope to expand the proportion of opinions favorable to Taiwan, and the follow-up report cautions that the publics of the four countries are not homogenous and that “a more nuanced approach, tailored to each country, will be needed to make more significant favorability gains down the line.”
There is another element mentioned in the second report that was not identified in the first: the more recent international context in which state-to-state relations and narrative evolution are taking place, and specifically, the flux and uncertainty resulting from the upheavals unleashed by US President Donald Trump.
According to the report, fear of aggression from Russia and China, as well as uncertainty over US defense commitments, are having the effect of drawing Europe and Taiwan closer together, as is the increasingly interconnected security of the Indo-Pacific region. Unfortunately for Taiwan, this same dynamic is leading to calls within the EU for closer ties with China, and that risks sidelining Taiwan-EU relations.
The government not only needs to redouble its efforts at messaging, it needs to expand the formats in which it sends these messages, do better at identifying targets and tailoring the messaging, and to do this with an awareness of the rapidly changing context.
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