China's Hidden Weapon: How Beijing Uses Taiwan's Own Voices to Wage an Information War

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War Without Bullets

When Chinese warships and fighter jets encircled Taiwan in large-scale military drills last December, a quieter battle was already underway — one fought not with weapons, but with videos on smartphone screens.

On Douyin, China's domestic version of TikTok, a Communist Party-run media outlet published a 51-second clip of Taiwanese opposition leader Cheng Li-wun. In it, she accused Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te of steering the island toward disaster. The clip spread quickly across Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms widely used in Taiwan.

This was no coincidence. It was strategy.

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Turning Taiwan's Voices Against Itself

Chinese state media outlets have been systematically amplifying Taiwanese critics of the island's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), according to five Taiwanese security officials and new data from IORG (Taiwan Information Environment Research Center), a Taipei-based research group that shared its findings with Reuters.

The playbook works like this: Beijing takes public statements by prominent Taiwanese opposition figures — particularly from the Kuomintang party (KMT), Taiwan's main opposition — and floods Chinese state media and social media platforms with those clips. From there, they get reshared and repackaged for audiences on platforms popular inside Taiwan, including Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.

The tactic is not entirely new, but its scale has grown dramatically. Familiar Taiwanese accents and faces simply sound more credible to Taiwanese audiences than voices from Beijing.

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The Numbers Tell the Story

IORG's data offers a revealing look at the scope of this operation. In the final quarter of 2025 alone, over 560,000 videos were posted on Douyin by 1,076 accounts operated by official CCP media outlets. Around 18,000 of those videos focused on Taiwan.

Using facial recognition technology — with results verified by human researchers — IORG identified 57 Taiwanese individuals appearing in 2,730 of those clips. The number of videos featuring Taiwanese voices more than doubled compared to the same period the year before, and total monthly airtime from such clips jumped by 164 percent to 369 minutes.

Of the 25 most-featured Taiwanese figures in these videos, 13 are affiliated with the KMT — ranging from current lawmakers to former government officials. Two others belong to a small pro-unification party. The remaining ten are influencers known for criticizing the DPP government.

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KMT Chairwoman: Beijing's Most Valuable Voice

At the top of the list stands Cheng Li-wun, the KMT's current chairwoman. She appeared in 460 videos across 68 separate Douyin accounts, generating more than five million interactions in the form of likes, comments, and shares.

The clips highlighted her calls for "peace" with China, her portrayal of President Lai as a "pawn" of outside forces, and her characterization of the DPP's stance on Taiwan's independence as dangerous and reckless.

Cheng visited Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing earlier this month. There, Xi told her that the KMT and the Communist Party must strengthen political trust and work together toward what he called the "motherland's reunification." The KMT said in a statement that Cheng's visit fulfilled a campaign pledge and reflected a long-standing tradition of dialogue between the two parties.

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Influencers and Retired Generals in the Mix

Beyond politicians, Beijing's media machine has also targeted influencers and former military officials. Among them is Holger Chen Chih-han, a bodybuilder popular with younger Taiwanese audiences. In a YouTube livestream last September, he said "Happy birthday, motherland" — a reference to China's National Day — and called the people of Taiwan and China "one family." Chinese state media quickly clipped and shared the moment.

More alarming were the appearances of retired Taiwanese military officers who have made statements playing into Beijing's narrative. One former army colonel claimed in a clip shared by China News Service that Chinese military drones had entered Taiwan's airspace undetected during exercises in December. He also suggested Beijing might conduct targeted strikes against pro-independence leaders. Taiwan's defense ministry denied the drone claim outright.

Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council urged the retired officers to be mindful of public perception, reminding them that they must not forget the oath of loyalty they once swore to Taiwan.

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The Real Goal: Crush the Will to Fight

The information campaign serves a very concrete military-political purpose. Taiwan's DPP government is seeking an additional $40 billion in defense spending — a package that includes drones, missile defense systems, and advanced weapons from the United States. Beijing appears to want Taiwanese citizens to believe that China's military is so powerful that any additional spending is simply futile.

Taiwan's defense budget proposal includes funding for 200,000 unmanned systems, domestic arms production, and an integrated air and missile defense network. The opposition KMT has repeatedly blocked the bill in parliament, delaying critical procurements.

Bonnie Glaser, head of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, put it plainly: Beijing's strategy is to lower morale, create a sense of hopelessness, and convince Taiwanese people that their best option is to accept integration with China — rather than fight for autonomy.

Taiwan's National Security Bureau recorded over 45,000 fake social media account networks and 2.3 million pieces of disinformation on China-Taiwan issues in 2025 alone. A 2025 NSB report revealed that Beijing's cognitive warfare efforts seek to divide Taiwanese society, weaken citizens' will to resist, and build global support for China's position.

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Taiwan Fights Back — With Media Literacy

Taiwan's defense ministry told Reuters it is countering this wave of influence operations by strengthening media literacy and psychological resilience within its armed forces. President Lai's office stated that cross-strait peace must be built on strength — not on giving in to authoritarian pressure.

Civil society organizations like IORG, the Taiwan FactCheck Center, and Doublethink Lab have long been on the front lines of identifying and countering Chinese disinformation campaigns, using a combination of human researchers and AI-assisted tools to detect coordinated inauthentic behavior.

Taiwan's government took an unusually direct step last year, issuing a civil defense handbook to households explicitly warning that any reports of Taiwan's surrender — should a conflict break out — must be assumed to be false. The acknowledgment itself speaks volumes: the information battle is intensifying, even if no shots have been fired.

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What the Polls Show

So far, Beijing's campaign has not visibly shifted Taiwanese public opinion on the fundamental questions of independence and unification. According to a January 2026 survey by Taiwan's National Chengchi University, support for maintaining the status quo indefinitely has actually risen to 33.5 percent since 2020. The share of people who favor moving toward unification with China remains stable at around 7 percent — a low figure that has barely budged in years.

The DPP, Beijing's primary political adversary in Taiwan, lost its parliamentary majority in 2024 but has won three consecutive presidential elections. The battle for Taiwan's future — for now — continues to be fought with videos, not violence.

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Sources

1. Reuters – "China turns Taiwan's own voices against it in information war" (April 17, 2026): https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-turns-taiwans-own-voices-against-it-information-war-2026-04-17/
2. American Enterprise Institute / Institute for the Study of War – China & Taiwan Update, April 3, 2026: https://www.aei.org/articles/china-taiwan-update-april-3-2026/
3. American Enterprise Institute / Institute for the Study of War – China & Taiwan Update, April 10, 2026: https://www.aei.org/articles/china-taiwan-update-april-10-2026/
4. AEI / ISW – China & Taiwan Update, January 16, 2026: https://www.aei.org/articles/china-taiwan-update-january-16-2026/
5. Global Taiwan Institute – "Enhancing Taiwan's Information Resilience" (February 2026): https://globaltaiwan.org/2026/02/enhancing-taiwans-information-resilience/
6. German Marshall Fund of the United States – "Election Interference and Information Manipulation": https://www.gmfus.org/news/election-interference-and-information-manipulation
7. Freedom House – "Taiwan: Freedom on the Net 2024": https://freedomhouse.org/country/taiwan/freedom-net/2024

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