As Chinese warships and fighter jets staged massive drills around Taiwan in December last year, a parallel action was unfolding on smartphone screens.
On Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, a news outlet run by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) posted a 51-second video of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) accusing President William Lai (賴清德) of inviting Chinese aggression.
Lai was “dragging all 23 million of us” in Taiwan into a “dead end, a road to death” by pursuing independence, Cheng said.
Photo: Reuters
The clip quickly surfaced on Facebook, YouTube and other platforms popular in Taiwan.
Chinese state media outlets are increasingly amplifying Taiwanese critics of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), including influencers and politicians linked to the KMT, according to five Taiwanese security officials and data from Taipei-based research group Taiwan Information Environment Research Center (IORG).
China imports the public statements of leading KMT and other opposition figures that are critical of the government and pumps them out in a torrent of anti-DPP messaging in Chinese state media and on social media platforms in China. Those clips are then shared and often repackaged for consumption on platforms popular in Taiwan, including Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, as well as on Douyin, sometimes embellished or presented in ways that obscure China’s hand.
While China has previously employed Taiwanese in its propaganda, it has turbocharged this information-warfare tactic, the security officials said.
Familiar voices and accents can sound more credible. The goal is to discredit a government Beijing accuses of seeking independence, the officials said.
With the DPP seeking US$40 billion in extra defense outlays, the campaign also appears aimed at convincing Taiwanese that China’s military power is so overwhelming that it is futile for Taiwan to spend heavily on more US weapons, IORG and three of the security officials said.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office and the Chinese Ministry of National Defense did not respond to requests for comment about Beijing’s information warfare.
In Taipei, the Ministry of National Defense said that it is countering a massive increase in Chinese “cognitive warfare” by strengthening the armed forces’ media-literacy skills and psychological resilience.
The Presidential Office added that cross-strait peace must be “built on strength, not on concessions to authoritarian pressure.”
Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, which are blocked in China, did not respond to questions about Chinese information warfare. Douyin also did not respond to a request for comment.
While Chinese preparations for military action against Taiwan continue, the information warfare is part of Beijing’s strategy of wearing down Taiwan without resorting to force. In this regard, the KMT provides a valuable opening for China: The party has moved to seek closer ties with Beijing in a bid to head off what it says is a crisis made worse by the DPP government’s provocation of China.
Cheng met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) earlier this month in Beijing, where Xi told her the KMT and the CCP must “consolidate political mutual trust” and “join hands to create a bright future of the motherland’s reunification.”
Cheng’s visit to Beijing fulfilled a campaign pledge and continued a long-established tradition of top-level meetings between the KMT and the CCP, the KMT said in a statement.
The two parties have many differences, but both believe disagreements should be resolved through dialogue, it added.
Data provided by IORG showed the mechanics of the Chinese campaign. The nonpartisan group of social scientists and data analysts is funded in part by the US and European governments, and Taiwanese academic institutions.
About 560,000 videos were posted on Douyin by 1,076 accounts run by official CCP media outlets in the fourth quarter of last year. About 18,000 videos discussed Taiwan.
IORG used facial recognition technology to identify 57 Taiwanese figures in 2,730 clips, with results verified by IORG researchers.
The number of videos featuring Taiwanese voices more than doubled from a year earlier during October and November last year, and monthly airtime jumped 164 percent to 369 minutes.
Strikingly, of the top 25 Taiwanese figures in the Chinese videos, 13 are affiliated with the KMT, from current lawmakers and party representatives to former officials under past KMT-led governments. Two others are senior officials in a small party that supports unification with China, while 10 are influencers known for criticizing the governing DPP.
Cheng was the top-ranked Taiwanese figure in the Chinese clips, featuring in 460 videos across 68 Douyin accounts and generating more than 5 million interactions, including likes, comments and shares.
The videos amplified her calls for “peace” with China, her criticism of Lai as a “pawn” of external forces, and her characterization of the DPP’s stance on Taiwan independence as destructive. Once aired on Chinese state media and social media platforms, some of the clips were repackaged and posted on platforms popular in Taiwan.
In its statement, the KMT said that Cheng’s comments reflected the mainstream aspirations of Taiwanese for peace.
“Even if mainland state media tend to incorporate more Taiwanese voices, this is based on the diversity of public opinion that already exists in Taiwan,” it added.
Various influencers were also heavily cited by the Chinese outlets. Among them were Holger Chen (陳之漢), a bodybuilder popular among younger audiences, and five retired senior military officials known for criticizing the DPP and Taiwan’s defenses.
The Mainland Affairs Council said that the government hoped the retired military officers “will be mindful of public perception” and should not echo Beijing’s rhetoric.
They “must not forget the oath they once swore to be loyal” to Taiwan, it added.
Support in Taiwan for maintaining the “status quo” indefinitely has risen 8 points to 33.5 percent since 2020, while support for maintaining the “status quo,” but moving toward independence has declined almost 4 points to 21.9 percent, according to a long-running annual survey series released in January by National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center.
The combined proportion who want unification with China as soon as possible or wish to maintain the “status quo,” but move toward unification has been relatively stable at about 7 percent.
It is unclear whether the intensification of China’s information warfare is having an impact. There has been no discernible shift in Taiwanese attitudes toward independence or unification since 2024, according to the survey data.
This timeframe roughly coincides with the period of intensified information warfare examined by IORG.
Taiwan’s intelligence officials recorded more than 45,000 sets of inauthentic social media accounts and 2.3 million pieces of disinformation on China-Taiwan issues last year, a January report by the National Security Bureau said.
It described the goals of Beijing’s information warfare: To exacerbate divisions within Taiwan, weaken the Taiwanese will to resist and win support for China’s stance.
“They want you to doubt the military and doubt Taiwan, to make you feel that no one will come to help you if war breaks out,” one Taiwanese security official said of China’s state media.
A civil defense handbook that the government issued to households last year went so far as to state pre-emptively that amid heightened tensions with China, any claims of Taiwan’s surrender must be considered false — a recognition that the information battle is intensifying, even if no shots have been fired.
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