Chinese Propaganda Floods Taiwanese Social Media
The Chinese Communist Party has significantly intensified its information warfare against Taiwan since President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) took office in May 2024, according to the latest report released by Taiwan’s Information Environment Research Center, or IORG (台灣資訊環境研究中心).
China’s disinformation campaigns doubled their output of anti-democracy content in the first half of 2025 compared with the previous year, systematically pushing 22 distinct targeted narratives across seven categories aimed at eroding trust in Taiwan’s democratic institutions.
One of the most common narrative categories was what the group termed the “martial law theory” (戒嚴論), which intentionally blurs the lines between legitimate national security measures and authoritarian oppression. Chinese state media also capitalized on major political events in Taiwan — including the “Fight Dictatorship” (戰獨裁) rally held by the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party on April 26, in which politicians from both the KMT and the center-left Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) demanded the resignation of Lai Ching-te. Chinese actors leveraged these opportunities to flood Taiwan’s social media landscape with anti-democratic narratives across platforms like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Threads.
IORG warned that such campaigns use the language and rhetoric of Taiwan’s opposition parties to disguise foreign narratives as local political discussions on social media. This tactic makes it challenging for users to distinguish between authentic Taiwanese political critiques and Chinese state propaganda.
