TikTok as a Weapon: How Beijing Floods Taiwan with Disinformation

During last year’s Presidential election in Taiwan, rumors swirled that Victor Lai Ching-te of the anti-Beijing Democratic Progress Party fathered an illegitimate child. His running mate, Hsiao Bi-khim, was accused of lying about her U.S. citizenship, claiming to have renounced it in order to meet eligibility requirements for office.

More recently, viral videos have claimed that President Lai was secretly promoting shady cryptocurrency investments. Other doctored clips show anti-unification figures boasting about government involvement in developing digital currency software. Still others allege that Taipei is secretly harvesting citizens’ blood for a U.S. bioweapon project.

It sounds absurd. Yet every day, Taiwanese social media feeds are saturated with a toxic mix of sensational hoaxes and more polished, carefully crafted narratives. Some stir fears of looming cross-strait conflict. Others paint Taiwan as riddled with racism, food safety scandals, or a fragile relationship with Washington.

In 2023, Taiwan’s National Security Bureau logged a 60 percent increase in Chinese-origin disinformation compared to the year before—more than 2.16 million cases. And as tensions between Beijing and Taipei escalate, so too does the sophistication of the Chinese Communist Party’s influence campaign.

“China conducts overwhelming political warfare against Taiwan—disinformation, cognitive warfare, fake news,” Liang-Chih Evans Chen, Associate Research Fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research tells me. “It’s a constant battle for public perception and morale. And it’s getting worse.”