Published: 10:16 AM, 18 April 2026
China turns Taiwan's own voices against it in information war
As Chinese warships and fighter jets staged massive drills around Taiwan in December, a parallel action was unfolding on smartphone screens.
On Douyin, China's version of TikTok, a news outlet run by the Chinese Communist Party posted a 51-second video of Taiwan opposition leader Cheng Li-wun accusing President Lai Ching-te of inviting Chinese aggression. Lai, Cheng said, was "dragging all 23 million of us" in Taiwan into a "dead end, a road to death" by pursuing independence. The clip quickly surfaced on Facebook, YouTube and other platforms popular in Taiwan, Reuters reports.
Chinese state media outlets are increasingly amplifying Taiwanese critics of the island's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), including influencers and politicians linked to the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), according to five Taiwanese security officials and data from Taipei-based research group IORG that was shared with Reuters.
China imports the public statements of leading KMT and other opposition figures that are critical of the Taiwan government and pumps them out in a torrent of anti-DPP messaging in Chinese state media and on social media platforms in China, according to the data and sources.
Those clips are then reshared 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 in the past employed Taiwanese figures in its propaganda, it has turbocharged this information-warfare tactic, the Taiwan 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. And, with the DPP seeking $40 billion in extra defence 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 American weapons, according to IORG and three of the security officials.
China's Taiwan Affairs Office and defence ministry didn't respond to requests for comment about Beijing's information warfare.
Taiwan's defence ministry told Reuters it is countering a massive increase in Chinese "cognitive warfare" by strengthening the armed forces' media-literacy skills and psychological resilience. President Lai's 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, didn't respond to questions about Chinese information warfare. Douyin also didn't respond to a request for comment.
China considers Taiwan part of its territory and hasn't ruled out using military force to seize it. Taiwan's government rejects China's sovereignty claim, saying it is already an independent country called the Republic of China, its formal name. Beijing refuses to speak with the DPP administration, and calls Lai a "separatist."
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, Taiwan's opposition 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, the KMT leader, met Chinese President Xi Jinping this month in Beijing, where Xi told her the KMT and the Communist Party must "consolidate political mutual trust" and "join hands to create a bright future of the motherland's reunification."
In a statement to Reuters, the KMT said Cheng's visit to Beijing fulfilled a campaign pledge and continued a long-established tradition of top-level meetings between the KMT and the Communist Party. The two parties have many differences, but both believe disagreements should be resolved through dialogue, it added.
