The Wall Street Journal reported on 21 September 2026 that China had secretly coordinated the April 2026 visit of the chairwoman of Taiwan‘s main opposition Kuomintang party to the mainland. Chinese officials had pre-approved her prepared remarks opposing Taiwanese independence before the trip and choreographed its full itinerary. China had also run AI disinformation campaigns supporting her election as Kuomintang chairwoman in October 2025. Taiwan’s security services determined the campaigns had helped tilt the vote in her favor.
China had been flooding digital spaces with content designed to undermine public trust in Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party and in US reliability as an ally. Taiwan’s National Security Bureau had identified 45,000 suspected Chinese-linked accounts in 2025, up from 28,000 in 2024. The accounts included deepfake videos fabricating statements by Taiwan’s president. In June 2026, a cluster of near-identical disinformation Facebook posts was traced to a military-linked content farm in China’s Hebei province. Chinese state actors had also been paying social media influencers to produce content echoing Communist Party talking points.
Efforts Category: China’s Political Subversion vs. Taiwan
