5. Other levers 

The other available levers of influence include clandestine funding (some 

Taiwanese groups have been paid to occasionally publish some articles that fit Beijing’s 

interests: for instance, the TAO presumably paid RMB30,000 (€3,800) for two articles)158; 

appointments to key positions (a CTi TV journalist explained that the way a number of 

Taiwanese media cover China was “organized” by representatives of the Chinese state who 

appointed China-based correspondents to editorial positions);159 and the organization of 

bilateral forums such as the Cross-Strait Media People Summit (兩岸媒體人峰會/兩

岸媒體人北京峰會) created in 2015. During its fourth edition in Beijing, in 2019, more 

than 70 representatives of Taiwanese media were told that it was their “duty” to promote 

Chinese culture and the reunification with China.160 

155. Hille, “Taiwan Primaries.”

156. Matthew Strong, “Taiwan TV Station to Move Online After Court Rejects Final Appeal, “Taiwan News (11 

Dec. 2020).

157. Huang, “The China Factor in Taiwan’s Media,” 34.

158. Yimou Lee and I-hwa Cheng, “Paid ‘News’: China Using Taiwan Media to Win Hearts and Minds on Island,” 

Reuters (9 Aug. 2019).

159. Cité dans Hille, “Taiwan Primaries.”

160. J. Michael Cole, “More than 70 Participants from Taiwanese Media Industry Attend 4th Cross-Strait Media 

Summit in Beijing,” Taiwan Sentinel (1 May 2019). 

447

B. Private cyber-armies 

Cyber-armies are groups of individuals that can be recruited to conduct campaigns 

for or against an entity or a person. This “post-helpers” (貼文小幫手) business, which 

consists in creating fake accounts and fake articles, has grown a lot in Taiwan during the past 

decade. It is also accessible to all budgets (“[you] could hire an Internet army for NTD 

10,000 [$330] a month”).161 Initially used by companies to promote their products,162 this 

process can be used for political purposes. Some agencies are specialized in political 

campaining, like AutoPolitical, which has worked all over Asia. Its slogan is “win an elec-

tion with artificial intelligence.” There is also a black market for social media accounts, sold 

to the highest bidders, where the most followed and oldest accounts are the most expensive 

(→ p. 376), PTT accounts for instance.163 Because they act through local agencies, it is not 

always easy to trace them back to foreign contractors and to prove an interference. 

C. Politics

1. Political parties

The KMT has become less important to Beijing since it lost power: “more and more 

you will hear voices in the CCP who also claim that the KMT is no longer the counterpart 

that they were banking on for unification with Taiwan.”164 For that reason, Beijing tries 

to diversify its channels of influence. In this instance, three small pro-unification 

political parties are used as local intermediaries by Beijing: 

• The New Party (NP – 新黨), created in 1993. Its spokesperson Wang Ping-chung 

(王炳忠), his father, and two executives of the Party’s Youth were found guilty of 

espionage on behalf of China in June 2018 due to their implication in an operation 

led by the Chinese citizen Zhou Hongxu (周泓旭) – also charged with espionage in 

September 2017. The small group, which called itself the “secret Star Fire unit,” cre-

ated a website (Fire News) to recruit Taiwanese people, including civil servants. They 

tried to obtain classified documents through members of the Taiwanese military, 

mostly on armament programs. Investigations discovered evidence of money transfers 

from mainland China and a document on which Wang Ping-chung wrote “I work under 

the guidance and assistance of the CCP to help the forces working to achieve unification 

across the Taiwan Strait.”165 This indictment clearly did not deter the NP from building 

a closer relationship with Beijing, as the party announced its intention to open a liaison 

office in mainland China right after the conviction.166 

• The Chinese Unification Promotion Party (CUPP – 中華統一促進黨) created 

in 2005. It was created by Chang An-le (張安樂), a man with a sultry reputation who 

161. Monaco, Smith, and Studdart, Detecting Digital Fingerprints, 19. 

162. Samsung’s Taiwanese branch received a 10-million-dollar fine (€295,000) in 2013 for using these services to 

promote its phones and smear competing products. 

163. Monaco, Smith and Studdart, Detecting Digital Fingerprints, 20.

164. Cole, “A Conversation About China’s Sharp Power,” 5.

165. Jason Pan, “New Party’s Wang, Others Charged with Espionage,” Taipei Times (14 Jun. 2018). 

166. Cole, Cross-Strait Relations since 2016, 53. 

448

became famous for his ties to organized crime. Known as the “White Wolf,”167 he was 

a leader of the Bamboo Connection (竹聯幫) gang, one of the largest Taiwanese triads, 

which also operates in the United States. Chang An-le was arrested there in 1985 under 

several charges including murder and drug trafficking. After serving a ten-year sentence 

in a U.S. prison, he came back to Taiwan where he quickly became involved in a case 

of corruption, which led him to flee to mainland China where he stayed for ten years. 

According to J. Michael Cole, that was when Chang An-le spent time with several “Red 

princes” including Hu Shiying (胡石英), who is said to be part of Xi Jinping’s “close 

circle.”168 He then founded the CUUP from China, and its Taiwanese branch in 2005. 

He came back in Taiwan in 2013 and was briefly arrested. He was arrested again in 

August 2019, charged with several offences including having received tens of thousands 

of dollars from China, which is illegal in Taiwan under the Political Donations Act.169 

Some suspect that the CUPP, like other pro-Beijing political groups, receives 

money from Beijing through Chinese companies, including those tied to the Taolue 

group (韜略集團) but also from criminal organizations (the Bamboo Connection and 

the Four Seas (四海幫)),170 networks of Buddhist temples and various United Front 

organizations in the area and in the world.171 The CUPP also created several cross-strait 

groups such as the Tainan Cross-Strait Exchange Promotion Association (台南市兩岸

交流協 會) and the Cross-Strait Taiwan Guangdong Exchange Association (台粵交流

協會會), whose final goal is to circumvent the Taiwanese government.172 The CUPP 

is presumably also used as an intermediary for Taiwanese companies that wish to settle 

in China and ensure that “ideological conditions” will be met by incoming companies.173 

• The Home Party (HP – 紅黨)174 created in 2017, which aims, among other things, 

to “uniting the majority of Taiwanese farmers and fishermen” (統合廣大農漁工)175 

– key populations in the Taiwanese political landscape (and historically swayed by the 

KMT), who are regularly targeted by disinformation campaigns that, for example, dis-

credit the agricultural policies of the DPP (→ p. 465). The HP was involved in at least 

two cases that showed its role in Chinese influence operations on the island. The first 

was a recruitment campaign, active since at least 2017, for the Taiwan Elite Class of 

the Communist Party School of the Fujian Province (中共党校福建省委党校台湾社 

会菁英班).176 The school “serves as an incubator of the central government,” and 

its teachers come from Beijing-based think tanks affiliated with the CCP. Student were 

expected to identify as Chinese and to support the One China policy. The second case 

occurred in April 2019, when the HP co-organized an event in Taichung called “2019 

167. Yimou Lee and Faith Hung, “Special Report: How China’s Shadowy Agency is Working to Absorb Taiwan,” 

Reuters (27 Nov. 2014). 

168. Cole, Democracy under Fire, 47-48.

169. “Pro-China Party Founder Indicted for Illegal Political Donations,” Focus Taiwan (13 Aug. 2019).

170. Cole explained that, under Ma’s presidency, the CPP often recruited from local gangs to “hire muscle” for its 

security service during official CCP visits (Democracy under Fire, 14.)

171. Cole, Democracy under Fire, 13.

172. Ibid.

173. Yimou Lee and James Pomfret, “Pro-China Groups Step Up Offensive to Win Over Taiwan,” Reuters (26 

Jun. 2019).

174. Sometimes translated as the “Taiwan Red Party” in English, which is the literal translation from Chinese. 

175. J. Michael Cole, “Organizers of Aborted Pro-Unification Rally Recruiting Taiwanese for Communist Party 

School,” Taiwan Sentinel (13 Apr. 2019).

176. It appears to have been created in 2014, see “福建省委党校轮训官员也培训台商 搭建两岸企业合作新 

平台” (“The Executives from the Party School in Fujian Province Are Also Training Taiwanese Businessmen to set up 

a New Platform for Trade Cooperation Between the Two Sides of The Strait”), 人民 网 (16 Sept. 2015). 

449

Peaceful Integration and Development Forum” (2019和平統一融合發展論壇), with 

two organizations from the United Front (the China Council for the Promotion of 

Peaceful Reunification (CPPRC, 中國和平統一促進會 (台灣)) and the China Peace 

Development Association (中華和平發展促進會)). The slogan of this event, which 

was eventually cancelled, was: “Proclaim the 1992 consensus, support peace and unifica-

tion” (宣揚九二 共識、支持和平、支持統一).177

2. Individuals

In addition to investing in political parties, Beijing also invests in individuals – 

politicians noticed for their potential or existing pro-Chinese inclinations and for 

their more-or-less strategic positions in the Taiwanese political landscape. Members 

of parliament, mayors, and advisors of various political backgrounds are invited on all-

expense-paid, usually luxurious trips to mainland China where they meet CCP execu-

tives for instance. They are then expected to implement policies in favor of Beijing at their 

respective levels. 

Granting access to a special economic zone is one of the methods used to cap-

ture the political elite and/or their family members, thus offering preferential con-

ditions to foreign companies. Cole reported that Beijing used this technique to “capture” 

Lin Kuo-ching (林 國慶), a former DPP politician who became independent and stood 

out in October 2019 when he said that “no one likes Taiwan more than Xi Jinping.” This 

declaration was surprising but probably explained by the fact that his son Lin Chih-yuan (

林智遠) owns a company operating in the Pingtan free-trade zone. He is also the assistant 

general manager of the Pingtan Free Trade Zone Cross-Strait Development Co. (平潭自

貿區兩岸發展公司) and has been active within the Chinese People’s Political Consultative 

Conference.178 

D. Influencers and other intermediaries

1. Groups and prominent figures on the cultural and artistic scenes

Beijing has, at the very least, two different tools in this area. First, using Chinese artists 

or cultural events as relays: Chinese artists that tour Taiwan can be used as vectors 

of “political warfare,” through the propaganda that they can spread or the contacts 

they can make. J. Michael Cole explained that the events themselves are usually not prob-

lematic, but they are used as a cover or opportunity to carry out other operations: “when 

they organize Chinese singing competitions, or concerts at National Taiwan University, it’s 

not the songs that they’re singing that are a threat to Taiwanese society, it’s the individuals 

who are organizing the event […] coming to Taiwan and using their time off to interact 

with other individuals and hopefully recruit some Taiwanese, or co-opt them.”179

Taipei is aware of that risk and has already barred some individuals from visiting – such 

as Liu Qi (刘奇), who introduced himself as the leader of an art group planning to per-

177. Ibid.

178. 吴晟炜 (Wu Shengwei), “台湾人士列席福建政协会议: ‘十四五’ 会有更多发展的机会” (“Taiwanese 

People Take Part in the Fujian CPPCC Meeting: the 14th Quinquennial Plan, There Will be Even More Opportunities 

for Development”), 中国新闻网 (China News Service) (24 Jan. 2021). 

179. Cole, “A Conversation about China’s Sharp Power,” 5.

450

form in Taiwan in November 2019. Liu was also the director of the Cultural Department 

of a United Front organization, the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese 

(ACFROC, 中华全国归国华侨联合会).180 Cole also mentionned the Shanghai-Taipei 

“Sing! China” music festival, which was planned at National Taiwan University (NTU) in 

September 2017 and co-organized by the city of Taipei and several cultural organizations 

in Shanghai. The event was actually devised to promote “the peaceful unification of the 

motherland,” as one Shanghai organization described on its website.181 The Chinese coun-

terpart even made a request, which was eventually granted: they wanted the “National 

Taiwan University” renamed as “Taipei City Taiwan University” in promotional material.182 

The event was eventually cancelled following student protests, but similar events had taken 

place on other campuses in the preceding weeks and years. 

Second, Beijing can also use the Chinese market as a lever to control Taiwanese 

artists. There, as often, both the carrot and the stick are used. The carrot: Beijing identi-

fies Taiwanese celebrities on TV, invites them to China and explains that, over there, their 

salary can be between 5 and 10 times higher. The stick: members of the Taiwanese cul-

tural industry identified as hostile to the CCP are denounced and often targeted by 

naming and shaming campaigns on social networks, which push them to apologize and 

publicly recognize that they identify as Chinese, or else they risk seeing their contracts, tours 

and shows cancelled. Access to the huge Chinese market being important, even vital, for 

much of the cultural industry, Beijing thus succeeds in whipping them back in line, and in 

some cases in turning Taiwanese actors, singers and models into real ambassadors 

for the CCP.183 

2. Civic organizations

Besides, Beijing uses “civic organizations” such as the Concentric Patriotism Association 

(中華愛國同心會) – which, along with its secretary general Chang Hsiu-yeh (張秀葉), 

openly advocates for reunification184 – that defend the CCP’s interests down to the 

streets of Taiwan, sometimes violently attacking targets such as Falun Gong members 

and pro-democracy and pro-independence activists.185 These organizations are also used to 

mobilize people for protests, even paying them (between 800 and 900 Taiwanese dollars 

(€23-26) per person to wave a PRC flag during various events in Taipei, according to 

J. Michael Cole).186

3. Networks of Buddhist and Taoist temples 

Some temples are suspected of contributing to the United Front’s activities. An article 

published in Mirror Media on October 2, 2019 revealed that yearly pilgrimages, including 

one dedicated to the goddess Mazu, are reportedly used as a cover for agents to orga-

nize meetings, transfer Chinese funds for United Front activities and to pressure 

180. “Chinese Artists Must Not Engage in ‘Propaganda’ in Taiwan: MAC,” Focus Taiwan (30 Oct. 2019).

181. Cole, Democracy under Fire, 15.

182. Ibid. 16

183. Ibid. 18

184. 林育立 (Lin Yuli), “德電視報導台灣大選 聚焦愛國同心黨支持統一” (“German TV’s Coverage 

Highlights the Patriotic Party’s Support for Reunification”), 中央社(CNA) (8 Jan. 2020). 

185. Lynn Lee, “Taiwan: Spies, Lies and Cross-Strait Ties,” Aljazeera (6 Sept. 2018).

186. Cole, Democracy under Fire, 16. 

451

uncooperative temples.187 About thirty temples, mostly in the south of the island, are pre-

sumably involved. The article explained that these temples had been infiltrated by members 

of the Chinese Unification Promotion Party, led by Chang An-le. However, according to 

a study by Luo Cheng-tsung,188 a professor at the Southern Taiwan University for Science 

and Technology, the 30 mentioned temples are only minor temples with little influence. 

According to him, attention should be paid to the main temples on the island, which are 

also under the influence of the CCP. 

In June-July 2017, a campaign accused President Tsai and her government of “persecut-

ing religion” and rapidly grew in intensity. The rumor specifically targeted the network of 

Buddhist and Taoist temples, with false announcements, such as a fake news announcing 

that the government would prohibit incense.189

4. The business community

The Taishang (臺商) – businesspersons working in mainland China – are import-

ant intermediaries for Beijing, not solely because of their sheer number, but also because 

of their economic and political weight. Some of them, members of local CCP branches or 

of United Front organizations, participate in Chinese influence operations. 

5. Members of the military

Senior officers and retired generals, especially freshly-retired generals, are a prime 

target for Beijing, because they are knowledgeable on Taiwanese defense capacities and the 

organization of its armed forces, and because they have a high-level network of still-active 

promotion comrades who have reached the highest levels of the hierarchy. These young 

retirees are thus invited to China to participate in ceremonies, where they embody the One 

China policy (in November 2016, the presence of 32 former Taiwanese officers singing the 

Chinese anthem at a memorial ceremony in China stirred a controversy), or to various events, 

during which sports or culture are useful opportunities to organize meetings. 

Between the summers of 2009 and 2011, at least twelve such events took place in China. 

For example, from June 1 to June 6, 2011, Chinese and Taiwanese retired military officers 

attended a golf tournament in Sichuan, visited the area hit by the 2008 Wenchuan earth-

quake and held a seminar on cross-strait relations in Beijing.190 Other meetings do not 

even pretend to be cultural or sports events and get straight to the point: in April 

2010, retired general Hsu Li-Nung (許歷農), the former director of the department 

of political warfare of the Taiwanese army led a delegation of twenty former offi-

cers through a trip in Beijing and Shanghai where they met, among others, “State 

Council Taiwan Affairs Office Director Wang Yi, Politburo Standing Committee Member 

Jia Qinglin (贾庆林) and CMC Vice-Chairman General Xu Caihou (徐才厚).”191 More 

187. 林俊宏 (Lin Chun-hung) and 黃揚明 (Huang Yang-Ming) “[白狼染紅宮廟]
吸收北港朝天宮董事 統 促

黨滲透全台30宮廟”, (“[White Wolves Stained the Wolves] Recruiting the Administrator of the Chaotian Temple in 

Beigang, the UCP infiltrated 30 Temples in Taiwan”), Mirror Media (22 Oct. 2019). 

188. 羅承宗 (Luo Cheng-tsung), “宗教組織無法管，中國吃定了台灣” (“Taiwan Cannot Control its Temples 

Anymore, China Exploits this Weakness”), 思想坦克 (5 Nov. 2019).

189. J. Michael Cole, “Fake News at Work: President Tsai ‘Persecutes Religion’ in Taiwan,” Taiwan Sentinel (20 Jul. 

2017). 

190. John Dotson, “Retired Taiwan Officer Exchanges Offer Insight into a Modern ‘United Front,’” China Brief, 

11:19, Jamestown Foundation (14 Oct. 2011). 

191. Ibid.

452

rarely, these meetings take place in Taiwan (in May 2010, about fifty former officers 

from Taiwan and around sixty former PLA officers met up in Taipei for a “cross-Strait 

friendship conference”192). The also target intelligence services: in December 2010, 

“Lieutenant General Hsu Ping-chiang of the National Security Bureau (NSB) and Major 

General Huang Chi-mei of the Military Intelligence Bureau (MIB) – led a delegation of 17 

retired MIB officials on a trip to China.”193 

These ties between both straits are often maintained by the Whampoa Military Academy 

Alumni Association (黄埔军校) – founded by Sun Yat-sen in 1924; the military academy 

has trained generals from both the nationalist and the communist sides of the Strait.194 Yet, 

this alumni association is actually a United Front organization operated by the UFWD. 

Hence, meetings between Chinese and Taiwanese officers are anything but spontaneous: 

they are simply one of the United Front’s many programs.

Beijing uses these meetings to create a network and solidify its influence, even 

inside the Taiwanese armed forces and intelligence services. It also sometimes 

uses them to destabilize the Taiwanese public opinion. It was thus revealed that, at a 

mundane event in Beijing, Hsia Ying-chou (夏瀛洲), a retired general from the Taiwanese 

armed forces, and former NDU President, reportedly said that “[from] now on, we should 

no longer separate the ROC Army (ROC meaning Taiwan) and the PLA. We are all China’s 

army.”195 Hsia Ying-chou denied saying this. Regardless, Beijing achieved its goal by con-

vincing Taiwan, where a controversy erupted, that such outbursts were at least possible. 

Following the story, President Ma asked the Ministry of Defense to prepare a code of 

conduct for retired generals visiting China.196 

Retired Chinese and Taiwanese military officers at a cross-strait golf tournament 

organized by the UFWD (source: Dotson, “Retired Taiwan officer exchanges”).

192. Ibid.

193. Ibid.

194. 許劍虹 (Samuel Hui), “轉化許歷農、吳斯懷成為「甯共毋獨」的統戰組織——黃埔同學會” 

(“Transformation of Hsu Li-Nung and Wu Sz-huai into a Whampoa Fellowship: A United Front Organization 

Promoting “Prefer Communism to Independence”), The News Lens (27 Feb. 2020). 

195. “Ma Orders MND to Draft Code of Conduct for Retired Generals Visiting the Mainland,” Official Website 

of the Kuomintang (10 Jun. 2011). 

196. Mo Yan-chih and Su Yung-yao, “Ma Calls for ‘Code of Conduct’ for Retired Generals,” Taipei Times (10 Jun. 

2011). 

453

New legislative dispositions were adopted in 2019 to avoid compromising situations 

like these: retired generals and highlevel officials, such as vice-ministers, who participate in 

political events in China, can now lose their pension (or fined up to 10 million Taiwanese 

dollars – €295,500 – if their pensions were paid in one installment when they retired).

6. YouTubers

Everywhere in the world, YouTubers have become a main channel for information 

for young audiences. Cognizant of this, Beijing tries to control their impact on 

Chinese public opinion, and to use them to attack Taiwan. During the last presidential 

campaign, for instance, after YouTuber Potter King (波特王) filmed a show with President 

Tsai, his Chinese partner Papitube asked him to delete it, criticizing him for calling Tsai 

“President” (a forbidden label in China, which uses “Taiwan leader” to avoid implying that 

Taiwan is a sovereign state). Potter King refused, thus ending the contract that allowed him 

to broadcast in China. Papitube said it “strongly rebukes any action which undermines the 

nation’s (China) dignity.”197 After the incident, the YouTuber was also unable to access his 

Weibo account, where he had a million fans.198 

Beijing also tries to recruit Taiwanese people to influence the Taiwanese pub-

lic opinion while covering its tracks, especially after the scandal around the Chinese 

YouTuber posing as a Taiwanese person (→ p. 467). They are reportedly trained by 

the PLA (both in terms of their technical skills and in terms of the content they will pro-

duce).199 

7. Disgruntled individuals

Generally, Beijing targets those in Taiwan who can become spokespersons because they 

have influence, but it also looks for those who are motived because they are unhappy with 

the current political order. For instance, and not unlike Canada or Australia, Aboriginals, 

or “First Nations,” are prime targets as they are regularly neglected by authorities. In Taiwan, 

Beijing targets aboriginal media and young people aspiring to a better life, but also 

disappointed shop owners in distressed areas, such as in the touristic sectors areas. To 

counter Beijing’s strategy of controlling the number of tourists to pressure the island, the 

government’s diversification strategy has been a success in recent years. It compensates 

the loss of Chinese tourists with a higher number of tourists from Japan and from Gulf 

countries especially, who also have a greater purchasing power. Tourism was doing well 

before being impacted by the pandemic, in ways similar to tourism all around the world. 

Nevertheless, because Chinese tourists visited specific areas not always toured by new tour-

ists, some tour-operators, gift shops, restaurants and other local shops in these areas were 

upset by the development. Hence, they are prime targets for Chinese influence operations 

attacking the Taiwanese government. This vulnerability is exacerbated by the fact that most 

of these areas are in the south, where local authorities are more sympathetic to China to 

begin with. 

197. “Taiwan YouTuber Loses China Business Over Tsai Interview,” France 24 (16 Dec. 2019); “YouTuber Potter 

King ‘Flirts’ Again with Taiwan President,” Taiwan News (20 Dec. 2019). 

198. Ko Yu-hao and William Hetherington, “YouTuber Loses China Contract Over “President,’” Taipei Times (17 

Dec. 2019). 

199. Interview with the authors, in Taipei (Jan. 2020). 

454

8. Overseas Taiwanese people

Reaching inside Taiwan also means reaching outside of the island; Beijing targets the 

Taiwanese diaspora all over the world, starting with Taiwanese people living in 

China (presumably over 1 million people). They were mostly left alone under Hu Jintao. 

But, under Xi Jinping, they are increasingly relied upon and mobilized against Taiwan.200

9. Chinese people living in Taiwan

Conversely, Beijing also look at Chinese citizens in Taiwan, or at people of 

Chinese origin on the island, as potential relays. The business community is the most 

obvious interlocutor. Wives are among the less obvious (and less scrutinized) relays: 70% 

of Chinese people who become Taiwanese citizens are women. This can be explained by 

the relative low competitiveness of middle-class Taiwanese men on the Taiwanese marriage 

market, which means that these men sometimes go to China or Vietnam to find spouses. 

Hence, women can become relays, but they must be accounted for individually, as they do 

not form an organized group and they cannot trigger mass movements of their own. 

III. Information manipulation

In its outward appearances, the Chinese strategy of information manipulation in Taiwan 

roughly follows the same pattern: fake or biased information “first appearing in Chinese 

state- or party-controlled media is then spread via Chinese social media. The disinformation 

is subsequently injected into the Taiwan media environment via social media – PTT board 

(a Taiwanese bulletin board system), Facebook fan pages, and closed groups – and is finally 

picked up and legitimized by traditional media.”201 Facebook is the most widely used 

social network (nearly 79.6% of Taiwanese people, a world record which explains why 

Facebook “has been a very important playground for disinformation in Taiwan”202). 

Facebook is ahead of YouTube (72.6%) and LINE, which is the most prominently used 

instant messaging application (98.5%), way ahead of Facebook Messenger (48.2%).203 

2,400 disinformation attacks are carried out daily on Facebook solely, “all of them 

originating from China,” and aiming to undermine Taiwanese democracy and its 

institutions.204 They are all meticulously planned, with spikes of disinformation occurring 

between 7 and 9 a.m., when Taiwanese people are in public transports using their phones.

During a parliamentary hearing in May 2019, lieutenant general Vincent Chen (陳文凡), 

deputy director of the National Security Bureau, confirmed that a few Taiwanese media 

had adopted Beijing’s editorial line (he described them as “complying media” (同路媒體)), 

and operated on a number of platforms (print or online press, social media) to spread dis-

information in Taiwan. The NSB said these operations were part of cognitive warfare (认

知 作战) in that they aim to shape a narrative that fits with Beijing’s interests.205 Chen did 

200. Interview with the authors in Taiwan (Jan. 2020).

201. Cole, Democracy under Fire, 21.

202. Cole, “A Conversation about China’s Sharp Power,” 3.

203. IORG, Event Studies of Chinese Information Operations Against Taiwan (19 Jun. 2020), 13, https://iorg.tw/.

204. Cole, “A Conversation about China’s Sharp Power,” 3. 

205. 游凱翔 (You Kaixiang), “國安局: 中共對台灣同路媒體放消息帶風向” (“National Security Bureau: the 

Chinese Communist Party is Spreading News in Taiwanese Media”), 中央通訊社 (Central News Agency) (2 May 2019). 

455

not reveal the names of these media, a decision that was criticized, including by KMT rep-

resentative Lu Yui-ling (呂玉玲), but it could be interpreted as a warning shot sent to these 

media companies.206 He however insisted on problems stemming from the purchase 

of Facebook fan pages and social influencers by Beijing and confirmed that some 

Taiwanese media were asking Beijing for approval before publishing opinion pieces.207 

The credibility of people spreading disinformation is at stake. How to earn the trust 

of the targets? One of the main methods is to pretend to be a direct witness, some-

one speaking from experience (at Kansai airport, for example, in the case of typhoon 

Jebi → p. 456). Another method is to institutionalize fake information, by making it 

seem like it comes from government officials, sometimes counterfeiting documents 

to legitimate the information.208 By the time the information is verified, and the govern-

ment issues a denial, the damage has already been done.

In terms of substance, these stories mainly revolve around four topics. First, the 

(DPP) government is painted as unable to work efficiently, not providing for the needs 

of its population, its protection… Some ad hominem attacks also target the president and 

members of the ruling majority. Second, they discuss Taiwan’s relationship to China 

(its independence), which is the key question defining the Taiwanese identity. Here, we 

obtained contradictory information from our interviews: for some, Chinese operations nur-

ture both sides of the debate, pro-unification and pro-independence alike, because they aim 

to divide the society rather than to impose a narrative, mirroring what the Russians did in 

the United States and in Europe (→ p. 620).209 For others, Beijing differs from Moscow as 

it only supports unification and always discredits independence and the DPP. Third, they 

focus on divisive societal topics that include agriculture (spreading rumors on falling 

prices), labor (a government allegedly pushing people to work more and earn less), LGBT 

rights and gay marriage (society is divided along generational lines here, with young people 

being more favorable, older and more religious people opposed to it), nuclear power, eco-

nomic problems (particularly low wages; unemployment is not an issue in itself), pensions, 

etc. Immigration is among other controversial topics that could be used in the future, but 

it has been relatively left aside for now. Fourth, the stories emphasize diplomatic rela-

tions and Taiwan’s uncertain position on the international stage (→ p. 476).

Of course, the narratives are adapted to different targets: the government’s economic 

failure and the lack of a future in Taiwan for young people (Taiwan is presented as a 

ghost island, see box below); the agricultural crisis, insecurity, health issues… to old people 

(harder to reach because they are less connected). 

206. 葉郁甫 (Light Yeh) and 宋弘麟 (Stalin Song), “刊出前會先讓北京過目! 國安局首爆中國在台「同路媒 

體」手法” (“Beijing will See it Before it Goes to Press! NSB Reveals the Chinese Methods for “Complying Media”), 

民視新聞 (2 May 2019).

207. Russell Hsiao, “Taiwan’s Intelligence Agency Confirms Some Local Media Co-opted by PRC,” Global Taiwan 

Brief, 4:9 (8 May 2019).

208. IORG, Event Studies of Chinese Information Operations Against Taiwan, 49. 

209. Garrett M. Graff, “Russian trolls are Still Playing Both Sides – Even with the Mueller Probe,” Wired (19 

Oct. 2018); Venuri Siriwardane, “How Russian Trolls are Adapting Cold War Propaganda Techniques,” Brookings 

Institution (15 May 2020). 

456

The ghost island narrative

One of the most common narratives used by Beijing to weaken and divide the Taiwanese 

society is the ghost island narrative (鬼岛): Taiwan is portrayed as having nothing to offer 

to its youth (low salaries, no professional opportunities).210 Beijing nourishes that story, not 

only by spreading messages on social media (there is even a namesake Facebook group,211 and 

forums on which young Chinese people discuss the topic). They also organize a brain drain: 

the China’s State Council Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) disclosed in early March 2018 “31 

incentives” (对台31项措 施) to attract companies and Taiwanese individuals to come live in 

mainland China, by pushing for the distribution of Taiwanese cultural products (movies, tele-

vision programs, books) in China, for example, or by having authors receive training in China 

or become members of Chinese professional organizations.212 In November 2019, 26 new 

measures were added to the list, 13 for companies and 13 for individuals.

There has been an increased awareness of Taiwan’s vulnerability to misinformation since 

two distinct events in 2018: the aftermath of typhoon Jebi in Japan and, two months later, 

the November 2018 municipal elections. 

A. The Typhoon Jebi Affair: when disinformation kills

This is a rare example of information manipulation that indirectly 

led to someone’s death; the incident “was a turning point in the 

understanding of information manipulation in Taiwan and 

their capacity to inflict damages.”213 

Category 5 typhoon Jebi was the most violent typhoon to 

hit Japan since 1993. It hit the Kansai region on September 4, 

2018. Consequently, Kansai International Airport, not far from 

Osaka, was severely flooded, grounding more than 3,000 per-

sons, including 750 Chinese and 500 Taiwanese citizens. On 

day later, at 12:23pm, a Weibo account named “Baby flooding 

beast” (洪水猛兽baby) posted a message stating that the Chinese embassy was “send-

ing chartered buses to evacuate Chinese travelers” and ending with “I spontaneously 

feel pride and cannot help to have tears in my eyes. China, I love you!” while tagging the 

Xinhua press agency, the People’s Daily (人民日报) and the Communist Youth League 

to attract their attention. Three hours later, the Chinese website Guancha (观察者 网) 

published an article untitled “750 Chinese citizens blocked at a Japanese airport, the 

powerful motherland comes to rescue them” which stated that the general consulate in 

Osaka had sent 15 buses to evacuate Chinese travelers. The article cited the aforemen-

tioned message from “Baby flooding beast” as well as Weibo account users claiming to 

have been among the Chinese people evacuated from the airport. According to those 

messages, Taiwanese people who wanted to get on the bus were told that they could 

210. See for example: “台湾薪资水平为何这么低? 台专家: 真是个 ‘鬼岛’” (“Why is Taiwanese Media’s Salary 

So Low? A Taiwanese Expert: it really is a Ghost Island”), Sohu.com (21 Mar. 2018). 

211. Cole, “A Conversation about China’s Sharp Power,” 16. 

212. Lawrence Chung, “Taipei Faces Brain Drain as Beijing Dangles ‘Equal Status’ Offers,” South China Morning 

Post (6 Mar. 2018). 

213. IORG, Event Studies of Chinese Information Operations Against Taiwan, 2. 

457

benefit from this service from the “motherland” if they felt Chinese (觉得自己是中

国人就能上车).214 Official Chinese media picked up the story.215

The story reached Taiwanese social media the following morning, first via Professional 

Technology Temple (PTT), the most popular online forum in Taiwan. An account 

named “czqs2000” posted a message titled “Does anyone have information on Chinese 

passengers getting preferential access to buses in Kansai international airport?” Other 

users shared articles from Guancha and the Global Times. Following this, the daily tab-

loid Taiwan Apple Daily (蘋果日報) published a message initially titled “The Chinese 

embassy sent buses to pick up Chinese passengers at the Kansai airport and asked 

Taiwanese people to declare themselves as Chinese to get on the bus.”216 Two hours 

later, a PTT account user under the name “GuRuGuRu” claimed to be a Taiwanese 

traveler stuck at the airport the previous day, and said she was able to get on a bus 

sent by China without having to identify as Chinese. She added that she had contacted 

the Taiwan Representative Office in Osaka but did not receive any help. Her message 

was extensively shared and discussed on Taiwanese social media. On September 14, 

Su Chii-cherng, (蘇啟誠), a Taiwanese diplomat and managing director of the 

Osaka branch of Taipei’s Economic and Cultural Bureau committed suicide, hanging 

himself at his home in Japan. He left a letter in which he said he could not bear the 

humiliation and public criticism that accused his bureau of not doing enough for 

his fellow citizens blocked at the airport. 

The following day, TFC published an investigation showing that all these stories were 

based on a false premise: in reality, and as was confirmed by a spokesperson of the Kansai 

airport, the Chinese consulate never sent buses to pick up Chinese citizens.217 The 

buses were chartered by Japanese authorities for all passengers, without distinction. The 

Chinese consulate had indeed asked to send its own buses, but its request was rejected by 

the Japanese authorities.218 Airport authorities moved the passengers to a transit terminal 

in a mall in the city of Izumisano, 11.6 km away from the airport. And it is there that the 

Chinese consulate sent its buses, which picked up Chinese citizens, but no Taiwanese citi-

zen (not the 1044 “Chinese” people, including 32 Taiwanese, claimed by the Chinese con-

sulate).219 During the airport’s evacuation, staff members from the China Southern Airline 

company gathered Chinese citizens in one of the buses, but it had not been sent by the 

consulate. 

Hence, a controversy was allowed to grow for a dozen days, leading to one death, 

as none of the Taiwanese media involved in the scandal bothered to check the 

initial information: they simply took anonymous online testimonies for granted, with-

out being suspicious. Political figures such as KMT’s Arthur Chen (陳宜民) were also 

instrumental in spreading the Chinese narrative. On September 17, the Taiwanese media 

watchdog (National Communications Commission, NCC) intervened and sent a warning 

to several televisions channels and online media who had not verified information in this 

story. In reality, the case showed that “the Taiwanese society in 2018 was generally 

214. “750名中国人滞留日本机场 强大的祖国来接人了” (“750 Chinese Citizens Blocked at a Japanese Airport, 

the Motherland Came to Rescue Them”), 观察者网 (L’Observateur) (5 Sept. 2018). 

215. “1,044 Chinese Tourists Evacuated from Typhoon-Hit Japan,” People’s Daily Online (6 Sept. 2018).

216. The title was later changed (IORG, Event Studies of Chinese Information Operations Against Taiwan, 17).

217. https://tfc-Taiwan.org.tw/articles/150.

218. Interview with the authors in Tokyo (Mar. 2019). 

219. Tai-Li Wang, “Does Fake News Matter to Election Outcomes? The Case Study of Taiwan’s 2018 Local 

Election,” Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research, 8:2 (2020), 94.

458

not aware of the [risk posed by] disinformation operations.”220 This incident made 

the population and social platforms more aware of disinformation as both serious 

and potentially lethal. It was evident for PTT, which stopped registering new accounts 

for some time afterward. 

In December 2019, Taiwanese influencer Slow Yang (楊蕙如), who built her wealth 

in the credit card business, and Tsai Fu-ming (蔡福明), were charged for having orga-

nized online harassment against Su Chii-cherng by paying several Internet users to 

insult him.221

While Taiwanese media bear a huge responsibility in this story, its origin remains 

suspicious. A rather common incident was transformed into an issue tied to the Taiwanese 

identity by an article from Guancha, which spread the (false) news that Taiwanese people had 

to identify as Chinese to get on buses reportedly chartered by the Chinese authorities. But 

Guancha “operates under Beijing’s Central Network Security and Information Committee 

Office.”222 The “czqs2000” account then spread the rumor on Taiwanese networks by post-

ing it on PTT. This is not irrefutable evidence, but its IP address (221.219.231.115) is based 

in Beijing and is apparently owned by a Chinese press photographer.223 Moreover, there 

was a “grouped publication” phenomenon on Facebook, found in many other disinfor-

mation cases, including during electoral campaigns, which consists in groups of fan pages 

publishing at about the same time or within very similar time frames.224 This highlights a 

possibly coordinated campaign, further signaling its potential state origin. To sum up, this 

fake story, designed to become viral in Taiwan, was presumably fabricated in China, 

spread by Chinese relays, introduced in Taiwan by a Chinese Internet user and then 

circulated on Taiwanese social networks, including on Facebook, in a coordinated 

fashion. For all these reasons, this could be a Chinese disinformation operation in 

which Taiwanese media, because of their incompetence, were objectively Chinese 

allies. 

B. Electoral interference

Not only does Beijing continue to rely on the permanent networks described in this 

chapter, it also intensifies its efforts during key moments of the Taiwanese democratic 

life, particularly during electoral campaigns. Electoral interference mainly takes two shapes. 

First, covert financial support for selected candidates: “[such] funds are believed to be 

made available through Hong Kong, through ‘dual use’ Chinese companies, via Taiwanese 

companies with a presence in China, and in the form of hard cash brought by couriers (e.g., 

businesspeople on visits across the Taiwan Strait).”225 Second, it is evident in the numerous 

information manipulations. 

220. IORG, Event Studies of Chinese Information Operations Against Taiwan, 48. 

221. Keoni Everington, “Slow Yang Charged with Spurring Suicide of Taiwanese Diplomat in Japan with Fake 

News”, Taiwan News (2 Dec. 2019). 

222. Tai-Li Wang, “Does Fake News Matter to Election Outcomes? The Case Study of Taiwan’s 2018 Local 

Election,” Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research, 8:2 (2020), 79. 

223. IORG, Event Studies of Chinese Information Operations Against Taiwan, 20. 

224. Ibid., 49.

225. Cole, Democracy under Fire, 18. 

459

1. The November 2018 municipal elections

There was a peak in information manipulations during the municipal elections orga-

nized on November 24, 2018, and which were largely won by the KMT. It was highlighted 

by a study of more than 5,000 messages reported to the Cofacts platform as being poten-

tially false during the four months preceding the elections, and one month after.226 Taiwan 

has always been the target of influence and disinformation operations emanating from 

mainland China, but they were particularly intense in this instance: “Taiwan’s 2018 election 

was the first time for this island to be massively attacked by fake news or disinforma-

tion.”227

There are probably a few reasons explaining this intensity: President Tsai’s election two 

years earlier put an end to the KMT’s political dominance and redefined Taiwan’s relation 

to China. This election, which was largely perceived as a referendum on the president, 

questioned the national identity. Finally, the President was unpopular (her approval rate 

had fallen from 70% to 30%), mostly because of reforms on divisive issues – gay marriage, 

labor rights, pensions, etc. – some of which were at the center of a multiple-choice referen-

dum on the day of the election. These controversial topics were logically instrumentalized 

during the electoral campaign. Minister Lo Ping-chen (羅秉成), who was in charge of the 

fight against disinformation, said that “on the gay marriage issue – this policy was distorted 

to such an extent that [it claimed] there will be no more moms and dads after such a refer-

endum was passed.”228

Two months before the election, the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau (法務

部調查 局) released a communiqué claiming to have “unequivocal evidence” of the 

Chinese government’s interference in the campaign through content farms pro-

ducing divisive fake news to divide the Taiwanese society.229 It also investigated 33 

cases of suspected Chinese financial contributions to Taiwanese candidates.230 The 

National Security Bureau (NSB) speaks of “media and psychological warfare” against the 

island, which it compared to the Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. It detected 

“many content farms, many bots and purchases of ‘likes’ coming from China and support-

ing pro-Chinese candidates only, through private companies.”231 “It costs 5,000 Taiwanese 

dollars to buy 1,000 logins, and the price rises during election campaigns. Some accounts 

change their IP addresses every day,” a member of government explained, adding that “the 

most common modus operandi was the spreading of fake news on social media, on Facebook 

and on LINE, before they got picked up by conventional media. We also saw usurpated IP 

addresses, fake accounts, and attempts to provoke or accentuate divisions between people 

who were pro and anti-China.”232 It also seems that illegal bets played a role too: “the like-

lihood of high returns if a certain candidate is elected could encourage bettors to call upon 

their friends and families to vote for the candidate in question.”233

226. 王宏恩 (Wang Hong’en), 選舉前的假新聞比較多嗎? ──以LINE為例 (“Are There Numerous Fake News 

Preceding the Elections? LINE’s Example”), 思想坦克 (Voice Tank) (5 Sept. 2019), https://www.voicettank. org/

single-post/2019/09/05/090501. 

227. Wang, “Does Fake News Matter to Election Outcomes?” 74.

228. Cited in Monaco, Smith, and Studdart, Detecting Digital Fingerprints, 16, note 25.

229. Chien Li-chung, Chung Li-hua, and Jonathan Chin, “China Using Fake News to Divide Taiwan,” Taipei Times 

(16 Sept. 2018).

230. Cole, Democracy under Fire, 18.

231. Interview with one of the authors and a NSB executive, in Taipei (Apr. 2019). 

232. Authors interview with a member of the government in Taipei.

233. Cole, Democracy under Fire, 19

460

Many irregularities were found in the campaign for the country’s second biggest 

city, Kaohsiung (2.8 million inhabitants). For two decades, the city was controlled by the 

DPP, which won the previous elections with 68% of the votes. The incumbent mayor, 

Chen Chu (陳菊) held the record of political longevity in the country after 1945 (2006-

2018). This time, she was facing a KMT candidate, pro-Beijing Han Kuo-yu, whose popu-

list style, such as the slogan “Make Kaohsiung Rich and Great” won him the nickname of 

the Taiwanese Trump, save for the fact that, unlike Trump he had largely been unknown 

months before the vote. His meteoric rise, which led him to be elected mayor, may 

have been greatly helped by Beijing. At first, there were a few suspicious signs. His 

social media accounts had a level of “community engagements” (an aggregate of likes, 

comments, and shares across the Internet) many times higher than all of the other KMT 

candidates combined.234 His Facebook account in particular prompted suspicions. His 

official page’s popularity growth was spectacular, it gained 225,882 “likes” and 235,038 

followers in less than a month, three times more than his DPP opponent and higher than 

the national average (around 12,000 “likes” and followers).235 The page had about half a 

million followers at the end of the campaign – twice as many as his DPP opponent, Chen, 

whose page was filled with insults and hateful comments. 

A Facebook group supporting him named “Han Kuo-yu Fans for Victory! Holding 

up a Blue Sky!” (韓國瑜粉絲後援團 必勝! 撐起一片藍天), created just one day after 

Han declared his candidacy, played an important role in the campaign. With around 

61,000 members at the time of the election, it became a hub offering many resources 

(talking points, memes, fake news discrediting the DPP opponent, etc.) to Han supporters. 

Yet, it was later established that this group had not been created by actual fans of the 

candidates, but rather “created, managed, and nurtured by what looks very much 

like a professional cybergroup from China.”236 Three of its admins, involved from 

the beginning, were suspicious accounts which turned completely inactive a day after 

the election. The LinkedIn profiles linked to these accounts exhibited stereotypical patterns 

and displayed the exact same characteristics as 249 other accounts: same description 

in simplified Chinese characters, similar mugshot-style photos that could have been cropped 

from decades-old graduation pictures, all claiming to be Tencent employees and Peking 

University graduates.237 Some even used the same photo under different names, thus 

confirming the fraud. Paul Huang, who uncovered the operation, added that “LinkedIn 

is known to be one of Beijing’s favorite playgrounds for conducting espionage and 

influence operations.”238 Numerous cases revealed in the United States,239 in Germany,240 

or in France,241 showed Beijing to be capable and used to creating hundreds or thou-

sands of accounts to scout, approach – and potentially recruit – targets, which is eas-

ier on LinkedIn, where people are usually looking for professional opportunities. Besides, 

LinkedIn is the only major American social media allowed in China.242 

234. Paul Huang, “Chinese Cyber-Operatives Boosted Taiwan’s Insurgent Candidate,” Foreign Policy (26 Jun. 2019). 

235. Between October 17, and November 14, 2018, according to Monaco, Smith, and Studdart, Detecting Digital 

Fingerprints, 17.

236. Huang, “Chinese Cyber-Operatives.” 

237. Ibid.

238. Ibid.

239. Jeff Stone, “LinkedIn is Becoming China’s Go-To Platform for Recruiting Foreign Spies,” Cyberscoop (26 Mar. 

2019). 

240. “German Spy Agency Warns of Chinese Linkedin Espionage,” BBC (Dec. 2017).

241. Christophe Cornevin and Jean Chichizola, “Figaro’s Revelations on a Chinese Spying Program Targeting 

France,” Le Figaro (22 Oct. 2018). 

242. Edward Wong, “How China Uses LinkedIn to Recruit Spies Abroad,” The New York Times (28 Aug. 2019). 

461

Another element pointing to Chinese interference came after the fact, with the defection 

of Wang Liqiang (王立强), who claims he had been an intelligence officer and asked 

Australia for political asylum in November 2019. His confession should be taken with 

a pinch of salt, but he claimed to have participated in influence operations against 

Taiwan during the 2018 elections by creating 200,000 fake accounts on social media 

and offering no less than 1.5 billion yuan (€188.5 million) to Taiwanese media to 

promote Han Kuo-yu’s campaign against President Tsai.243 Based on the data released by 

Wang, two people he named were arrested in Taiwan for being Chinese agents. 

Finally, regarding the extent to which fake news spread during this campaign actually 

reached their goals – whether or not they really influenced the electors’ opinions – a survey 

carried out immediately after the vote, on a sample of 1,068 voters, highlighted the two 

most influential fake news: that President Tsai did not leave her armored vehicle and “hid” 

behind armed soldiers as she visited a region that had suffered from heavy floods in 2018; 

and the typhoon Jebi affair (→ p. 456). The study also showed that the voters who were 

the most influenced were politically independent. That year, a majority of them voted for 

the KMT.244 

Largely perceived as a referendum on the government and as a general repetition for the 

January 2020 general elections, the 2018 municipal elections were also an eye opener, 

and increased awareness of the risks posed by electoral interference. They also high-

lighted the leading role played by content farms (→ p. 367) since it is now accepted that, 

during the 2018 campaign, a large part of the published content was produced in con-

tent farms coordinated by the PLA.245

2. The presidential and legislative elections of January 2020

On January 11, 2020 Taiwan organized its 15th presidential election and 10th legislative 

election. Democratic Progressive Party Incumbent Tsai Ing-wen was re-elected with 57.1% 

of the votes, against the Kuomintang candidate Han Kuo-Yu (38.61%) and the People 

First Party candidate James Soong (4.26%). Turnout stood at 75% (compared to 66% in 

2016) – the highest in twenty years. According to Liberty Times Net, the number of voters 

that registered abroad doubled compared to 2016.246 The DPP also maintained its majority 

in the Legislative Yuan, while losing a few seats (from 68 to 61). The KMT gained three 

seats (now 38). The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), led by the mayor of Taipei, won 5 seats 

but only 1.5 million votes, compared to 4.8 million and 4.7 million for the DPP and KMT 

respectively. The remaining 9 seats went to other parties. This election also contributed 

to feminizing the parliament: women won 45.6% of the seats, which is comparable to 

Scandinavian countries.

During this election, and not unlike the preceding one, “we observed Chinese 

state-affiliated activities stealthily targeting every segment of the influence oper-

ations lifecycle, from production and amplification to dissemination.”247 Beijing 

started by covertly funding some candidates. In December 2019, the Justice Ministry 

243. Renée Diresta et al., Telling China’s Story: The Chinese Communist Party’s Campaign to Shape Global Narratives, 

Stanford Internet Cyber Policy Center (Palo Alto: Hoover Institution, Jul. 2020), 26. 

244. Wang, “Does Fake News Matter to Election Outcomes?” 67-104.

245. Beauchamp-Mustafaga and Chase, Borrowing a Boat Out to Sea, 28.

246. “Taiwan Election: Disinformation as a Partisan Issue”, Stanford Internet Observatory (21 Jan. 2020). 

247. Insikt Group, “Chinese Influence Operations Evolve in Campaigns Targeting Taiwanese Elections, Hong 

Kong Protests,” Recorded Future (29 Apr. 2020), 1. 

462

revealed it had identified 66 cases since July, involving 279 people, six of whom had been 

arrested, in connection to amounts paid from accounts located in China as well as in Hong 

Kong, Indonesia, and Vietnam, reaching 100 billion Taiwanese dollars (€2.95 billion).248 

Authorities also found and closed 1,700 clandestine casinos, seized more than 50 million 

Taiwanese dollars (€1.48 million).249

Information manipulation was however less prominent than expected, for several 

reasons. First, precisely because the government and civil society were better pre-

pared following the 2018 fiasco.250 Second, because Chinese efforts had been concen-

trated on the Hong Kong crisis, particularly between September and November 2019, 

leading to more sloppy and less subtle operations against Taiwan that were easier to spot 

for these reasons. These operations were also carried out in vain, since the Hong Kong 

crisis was a strong repellant: it confirmed Beijing’s anti-democratic ambitions and the 

failure of a “One Country, Two Systems” policy. This clearly made things more difficult 

for pro-unification candidates, particularly for Han Kuo-yu (KMT), the incumbent pres-

ident’s main opponent. It became quite clear during the summer, or at the beginning of 

the fall of 2019, that he would not win the presidency. From that moment on, there was 

no point for Beijing in investing too much in an unwinnable election. What could be 

impacted, though, were the legislative elections, which was taking place simultaneously, with 

the objective of making as many pro-unification candidates win as possible. Finally, digital 

platforms were proactive. Facebook, especially, recruited a staff to specifically oversee 

the electoral campaign, set up an “election war room,” deleted 51 accounts, 118 pages as 

well as 99 groups linked to them for “unauthentic behavior.” Suppressions of this kind are 

actually frequent but they were noticed this time around, because one of the groups, sup-

porting Han Kuo-yu’s candidacy, had more than 150,000 followers. Facebook had to justify 

itself. Apparently, the manipulations were not coordinated, and their origin was not estab-

lished. From Facebook’s point of view, elements hinting to China (such as the use of 

simplified characters or the time when people were active) were not necessarily prob-

lematic, Chinese web-users having the right to express support for a Taiwanese candidate. 

We should also note that the page belonging to the third candidate, James Soong (founder 

and president of the pro-unification and anti-independence People’s First Party) gained 

500,000 “likes” (+359%) and almost 500,000 followers (+356%) between the December 

12 and 16, 2019, compared to only about 12,000 (both likes and followers) in the following 

weeks – a gain “unlikely to be organic,”251 that points at the use of bots and fake accounts 

to artificially inflate a community. 

According to the Taiwan FactCheck Center, the first fact-checking organization in 

Taiwan, the disinformation campaign accelerated in October: before, most of their 

activities revolved around debunking false news about science, health, food safety, envi-

ronment, trafficking, and so on. But in October, political topics became prevalent. And 

most of the false news were published in simplified Chinese, thus presumably pro-

duced in mainland China.252 A significant proportion focused on procedural elements, 

the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) mostly, with rumors about the ink that was being 

248. 顧荃, “蘇貞昌: 境外勢力干擾選舉必痛加打擊” (“Su Tseng-chang: Foreign Forces Interfering in Elections 

are Hard to Combat”), 中央社 (CNA) (12 Dec. 2019).

249. Cole, Democracy under Fire, 19. 

250. Iain Robertson, Chinese Messaging Across the Strait: China-friendly Narratives and the 2020 Taiwan Presidential Election, 

DFRLab, Atlantic Council (Dec. 2020), 5.

251. Monaco, Smith, and Studdart, Detecting Digital Fingerprints, 53. 

252. An interview with one of the authors at the Taiwan FactCheck Center in Taipei (Jan. 2020). 

463

used (said to invalidate votes for Han Kuo-yu), ballot delivery, counting, etc. These tactics 

hoped to cast doubt on the election’s integrity, thus lowering trust in the results. 

This is a tactic used by people who know they will lose: if an election cannot be 

won, at least try to weaken the winner. Other more topic-based operations targeted 

international tourism (accusing the government of paying tourists), gay marriage, or the 

idea that President Tsai “was profiting off AIDS” because she invested in biotechnologies. 

In order to spread the idea that even the adminis-

tration had lost trust in the government, oppo-

nents published a fake news targeting the 

Presidential Office Secretary-General Chen 

Chu (陳菊), a leading DPP figure, saying that an 

investigation from the Ministry of Justice estab-

lished that she was corrupt and had stolen 50 bil-

lion Taiwanese dollars (€1.48 billion) when she 

was Mayor of Kaohsiung. This rumor was initi-

ated in April 2019 by the Chinese Phoenix press 

agency. The Ministry of Justice Investigative 

Bureau did deny it in a November press release, 

but it was not enough, and the fake news was 

intensely shared during the campaign’s final 

month, in December 2019. And it completely stopped the day after the election, which 

confirmed that its goal was indeed to influence the results.253 

Media-based disinformation was present during the campaign. On Facebook, 

DFRLab gave the example of a CCP-aligned page that spread disinformation on the 

president: “Headlines across the Strait” (@taiwanheadlines 兩岸頭), was still active in 

March 2021, with more than 766,000 followers. Created in 2015, DFRLab noted that it 

underwent a series of name changes – one indicator of inauthentic behavior. In October 

2018 (ahead of the 2016 president election), its first name was “2016 Taiwan Presidential 

Election” (台湾大选). Following Tsai Ing-wen’s victory in January 2016, the page became 

“Advice to Tsai Ing-wen” (向蔡英文建言) and was later renamed several times, adapt-

ing it to the local political context. The owner of this page is the Chinese company VTV 

Internet Technology Jiangsu Limited Co. (微视网络科技江苏有限公). The main share-

holder of the company is the Elion group, whose chairman of the board, Wang Wenbiao, 

is a businessman “who also holds [an] important position in the CCP’s Chinese People’s 

Political Consultative Conference, the ‘highest-ranking entity overseeing the United Front 

system’.”254

253. IORG, Event Studies of Chinese Information Operations Against Taiwan, 27. 

254. Robertson, Chinese Messaging Across the Strait, 12. 

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Aside from Facebook, Twitter, LINE, and YouTube, other platforms such as PTT, 

Dcard, and Weibo, were also used to spread disinformation during the 2020 pres-

idential election campaign.255 YouTube can be used to recycle debunked printed fake 

news into videos, and it was used much more than before.256 Several videos, for example, 

questioned the authenticity of Tsai Ing-wen’s PhD (see screenshot below) – a persist-

ing rumor, already prevalent on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, so much so that the 

prestigious London School of Economics (LSE) had to publish a press release in October 

2019 to attest that Tsai ing-wen did indeed receive a PhD in law in 1984.257 This campaign 

lasted until after the election, as the idea that her PhD was fake gave legitimacy to 

the notion that the election was fake as well. Thus, on February 21, 2020, a petition 

appeared on the White House website258 “We the People,” titled: “Luc 8:17: we want the 

truth on the Taiwanese president’s fraudulent PhD.”259 This petition was shared profusely 

on social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) in Taiwan as well as in the Chinese-

speaking press in the United States,260 as part of articles or advertisements that called on 

the Chinese diaspora to sign the petition.261 But, with only 42,347 people signatures in 30 

days, the petition did not reach the 100,000-signature threshold required to be considered 

by the U.S. government. However, as soon as the petition closed, another petition was 

created by the same Internet user (L.H.) which claimed that the reason why the petition 

did not meet the required threshold is that it was “hacked” by “Tsai’s hackers,” including 

her minister of digital affairs Audrey Tang. This second petition asked the White House to 

conduct an investigation – without much success either, it only collected 3,647 signatures 

in 30 days.262

255. Ibid., 17.

256. Monaco, Smith, and Studdart, Detecting Digital Fingerprints, 50.

257. “LSE Statement on PhD of Dr Tsai Ing-wen,” The London School of Economics and Political Science (8 

Oct. 2019).

258. A system implemented under Obama to bring the government’s attention to causes that can gather more than 

100,000 signatures in 30 days: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/about.

259. The petition could be found on: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/luke-817-we-want-truth-

Taiwanese-presidents-fraudulent-phd-degree but it has been deleted since then. The title refers to the Bible’s passage: 

“for there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed.”

260. Including Chinese of Chicago, St. Louis Chinese Journal, Chinesejournalus.net, Sing Tao Daily and Southern Daily. 

261. Monaco, Smith, and Studdart, Detecting Digital, 56-59.

262. The petition could be found on: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/possible-security-breech-and-

tempering-white-house-petition-zhi-yi-bai-gong-wang-zhan-bei-hai-ke-ru-qin-yi-ji-bai-gong-de-qing but it has since 

then been deleted.

465

At the top: the since-deleted petitions on the website of the White House. At the bottom: video published by the 政經關不了

news channel (True Voice of Taiwan) on August 31, 2019. This show, hosted by Peng Wenzheng (彭文正), 

pretended to demonstrate to what extent Tsai falsified her PhD.263

C. Agriculture as a key battleground for disinformation 

Farmers are a significant voter base in Taiwan and, with the Taiwanese working-class, 

one of the two groups most supportive of the current government. They are thus regu-

larly targeted with disinformation in the hope of turning them against the DPP – oper-

ations in which content farms (→ p. 367) usually play an important role.264 

Banana prices fell in May 2018 due to a rising production, quickly reaching a five-year low 

before the Agricultural Council intervened. But many articles written by content farms sus-

tained and exaggerated the farmer’s “panic.” One article on Mission titled “Pineapple prices 

are bad, bananas also go below the dollar, and seasonal fruits are not good either: farmers 

are now panicking,” was largely shared on May 29, 2018 on the Facebook pages “Kaobei 

DPP, Recall the DPP” (罷免民進黨) and “Kaobei Current Events” (靠北時事). Two days 

later, the website China Review, which belongs to the China Review News Agency, created in 

Hong Kong in 2005 (a part of the China Review Group (中国 评论集团) created in 1998), 

published an article on its website in Taiwan quoting a farmer who presumably said that “if 

the Tsai government does not act quickly, we will see if farmers do not rebel.” This article 

was picked up by the content farm Nooho which merged it with another article and added 

a new title: “if the DPP does not fall, farmers will be good-for-nothings.” 

The following day, on June 2, an unknown writer on Mission copied and modified an 

article initially published in the Apple Daily Taiwan (蘋果日報), changing its title to “Helen 

Chang [a DPP politician]: it’s China’s fault if we have an oversupply of fruits, it’s a mat-

ter of national security” and spread it on forums and on Facebook. At the same time, 

Xinhua and the Chinese content farm Meiri Toutiao (每日頭條) wrote that “the Taiwanese 

public opinion believes that the DPP authorities’ refusal to recognize the 1992 consensus 

effectively froze inter-strait relations and severely impacted tourism industries, agricultural 

industries and fishing in Taiwan. The continental market is essential in solving unmarket-

able price declines in Taiwan.” 

263. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyEd-VVUxsg&app=desktop.

264. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyEd-VVUxsg&app=desktop.

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Picture with misleading captions also circulated on social media. On one of them, pre-

sumably taken in June 2018, a truck is seen dumping bananas in a ditch in Kaohsiung. 

On LINE, this photo came with comments such as “the media does not dare report that 

the bananas from Qishan and Meinong in Kaohsiung are massively thrown away, every-

thing has been silenced” (高雄旗山美濃的香蕉棄置現場新聞不敢報，一切都新聞封 

鎖), or that a kilo of bananas was now sold for one dollar (台香蕉一公斤一元). But the 

Taiwanese journalist Li Huiyi (李慧宜) took the picture in 2007 for the 我们的岛 TV 

show on public television. And to prove that the “recent” photo was a fake, she went back 

to the exact same spot on June 6, 2018.265 

Similarly, a picture showing thousands of pineapples rotting in a pond spread on social 

media in 2018, particularly on LINE, with the same narrative (DPP policies are responsible 

for declining prices, pushing farmers to throw their production away). In fact, this photo 

had been taken in Xuwen District, in the Zhanjiang city jurisdiction of Guangdong, in 

mainland China.266 

A year later, the same scenario was repeated: arti-

cles initially published on Mission and then 

shared on Facebook fan pages divided the 

Taiwanese society (this time about a story on 

pesticides and bananas) and Chinese content 

farms like Meiri Toutiao kept painting China in a 

positive light, claiming it bought Taiwanese goods 

to help the island’s farmers, who were incidentally 

grateful for that.

For example, on March 8, 2019, in the middle of 

an election campaign – in a move visibly aimed at 

weakening the DPP – the pro-KMT CTi televi-

sion channel aired an interview in which a grape-

fruit producer said that farmers had poured 200 

million tons of grapefruits in the Zengwen reservoir (曾文水库) the previous year.267 The 

interview was immediately picked up by KMT member Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) who, 

standing behind the presenter, corrected the number because it was too high: he admitted 

it was probably closer to 120 million tons – which remains huge and unconvincing. Later in 

265. 李慧宜 (Li Hui-yi), “記者還原真相! 旗山美濃香蕉「沒有棄置現場」請別流傳傷害農民” (“A 

Journalist Re-Establishes the Truth! No Abandonned Banana in Qishan, Please, Do Not Spread Rumors that Could 

Hurt Farmers”), 上下游 (News and Market) (6 Jun. 2018). 

266. “[假照片]台南鳳梨丟棄電視不敢報導? 來自中國的照片和影片” (“[Fake photo] Television Does Not 

Dare to Report on the [Case of] Waste in Tainan? [True] Photos and Videos from China”), MyGoPen (24 May 2018).

267. Available on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llAn6pTUa6w.

467

the interview, the farmer Chen stopped mentioning the Zengwen Dam and instead talked 

about the Zengwen River (曾文溪). Nevertheless, CTi captioned its video: “200 million 

tons of grapefruit are thrown in the reservoir” (see screenshot below).

D. A Chinese journalist posed as a Taiwanese YouTuber (2019)

In August 2019, an Internet user showed what he considered to be evidence that 

President Tsai Ing-wen and the DPP were “selling” Taiwan to Japan and the United States 

in a video shared on YouTube and Facebook.268 He spoke Mandarin with a Taiwanese 

accent and used traditional characters in his video’s subtitles. He even perfectly 

mastered the Taiwanese dialect, so much so that he really seemed to be a native of 

Taiwan. However, the Investigative Bureau of the Ministry of Justice revealed that he was 

a Chinese agent spreading fake news.269 A body of corroborating evidence did indeed 

show that he was a journalist and radio presenter serving the PRC.

In his video, the Internet user contended that DPP members were the descendants of 

Japanese colonizers who took money away from Taiwanese taxpayers to enrich Japan. He 

said that, according to official numbers from the Ministry of Economic Affairs, more than 

a third of the trade surplus from business with the PRC was given to Japan. It was meant 

as an irrefutable proof that DPP members, including Tsai and the Taiwanese representa-

tive in Japan Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), were “sold” to Japan: they were described as inciting 

Taiwanese people to accept imported “radioactive” food from the Fukushima region, that 

Japan struggled to sell abroad. The video’s author also criticized Tsai’s government for 

squandering Taiwanese taxpayer’s money by buying military equipment that “is not even 

working” – a hint at the F-16V bought from the United States. He ended the video by call-

ing his viewers to make the right choice during the 2020 presidential election. 

This was the first video posted on his YouTube channel and Facebook page “At the 

Foot of Mount Jade” (玉山腳下), a name referring to the Yu Shan mountain at the center 

of Taiwan. In two months, the video was liked over a thousand times on each platform, 

shared more than 1,700 times on Facebook, watched more than 15,800 times on YouTube 

268. Facebook Video: “蔡英文賣台證據，實錘! 還不抓嗎?” Facebook (22 Aug. 2019), https://www.facebook. 

com/watch/?v=381426715789427; YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3CwlVfd3H8&t=33s. 

269. “「蔡英文賣台」影片竟是統戰手法 調查局: 轉傳恐觸法” (The Video “Tsai Ing-wen’s Treason” is In 

Fact a United Front Tactic: Investigation: Its Diffusion May Violate the Law”), Apple Daily (21 Oct. 2019), https://

tw.news.appledaily.com/local/realtime/20191021/1651955/. 

468

and 127,000 times on Facebook. The YouTube channel has since been made private, but 

the videos remain accessible on his Facebook page. In other videos, he fueled controversy 

over Tsai’s PhD,270 accused the United States of interference in Taiwanese elections through 

their support for Tsai,271 or called on Taiwanese media to be more disciplined, verifying 

facts rather than spreading rumors.272 

This person, who introduced himself as Xida (希達), seemed to be Zhang Xida (

张
希达), a PRC journalist and radio presenter. His employee profile is easy to find 

on HelloTaiwan (nihaotw.com),273 a media platform for Taiwanese audiences owned by 

the China National Radio (中央人民广播电台).274 The latter belongs to the China Media 

Group (中央广播电视总台), or Voice of China (中国之声), a subordinate to the State 

Council of the PRC. 

Zhang Xida is a journalist, author of many articles on issues related to relations 

between China and Taiwan.275 He also followed Han Kuo-yu for a few months and por-

trayed him in a very favorable light in a video published on Weibo on March 27, 2019 

by the Cross-straits Internet Exchange Committee of the Internet Society of China (中

国互联网协会海峡两岸互联网交流委员会).276 It effectively introduced Zhan Xida 

as a CNR journalist (“央广记者”).277 The post was then picked up by the account of 

a show on the Shenzhou Easy Radio station, otherwise known as CNR 6 (中央 人民

广播电台神州之声),278 with the comment “here are the words of our dashing corre-

270. 玉山腳下 (Yushanjiaoxia), “蔡英文假學歷，民進黨真斂財，陳明文300萬就煞寥寥?” Facebook (9 Sept. 

2019), https://www.facebook.com/lovetw3000times/videos/1125459457842023; “一篇論文搞定2個博 士學

位，蔡英文的神論文昨天公佈，不能說的秘密太多”, Facebook (24 Sept. 2019), https://www.facebook. com/

lovetw3000times/videos/505554506905112.

271. 玉山腳下 (Yushanjiaoxia), “美國赤裸干涉台灣選舉，台北法案做賊喊捉賊，蔡英文夜夜做夢都會 

笑” Facebook (28 Sept. 2019), https://www.facebook.com/lovetw3000times/videos/1104141263113969.

272. 玉山腳下 (Yushanjiaoxia), “大陸人每天只能買2公斤豬肉，台灣媒體還有新聞素養嗎?” Facebook (2 

Sept. 2019), https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=502012260573239. 

273. His HelloTaiwan profile: http://nihaotw.com/gb/zbfc/20161116/t20161116_523271611.html. Archived 

here: http://archive.md/929IO. HelloTaiwan Presentation: http://www.hellotw.com/gb/stzn/20191023/

t20191023_524829085.html.

274. HelloTaiwan http://www.nihaotw.com/ – 中央人民廣播電臺對台灣廣播中心版權所有.

275. For example, an article on an event fostering cross-strait relationships for young musicians and published on 

October 23, 2019, on the CNR website: http://news.cnr.cn/dj/20191023/t20191023_524829362.shtml.

276. Zhang Xida on Han Kuo-yu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=028VzA9FL-c.

277. Weibo Account “融融来了” https://www.weibo.com/345998109?is_hot=1; Chinese website: http:// www.

siec.Taiwan.cn/.

278. Weibo account “CNR祖地乡音” https://www.weibo.com/u/1980070714?refer_flag=1001030103_&is_

hot=1; CNR 6 is a radio station for Taiwanese audiences, in regional dialects and in Mandarin. 

469

spondent Zhang Xida.”279 He is indeed tied to CNR 6, given that he participated in the 

conception of one of its daily shows, broadcast since 2012 from the first Chinese boat 

that connected the city of Quanzhou to the Kinmen (Quemoy) Island, the Pengjiang (蓬

江輪).280

Other details revealed his Chinese identity: he used the term “dangju” (当局) to talk 

about Taiwanese authorities, which is not used by Taiwanese people because it implies that 

the authorities in power are not legitimate.281 It is used by the Chinese however. In addi-

tion to that, in another video, the wrong transcription in simplified characters of the word 

“gan” in the expression “dried mangos” (芒果 干) was noticed. The traditional character 

is usually written “乾” (pronounced in the first tone) but the author used “幹,” which is 

homophonous (pronounced in the fourth tone). However, both characters were simplified 

in the PRC as “干.” Hence the mistake made by Zhang Xida, who involuntarily revealed 

that he was from the continent, and not from Taiwan.282

“Awful! China’s methods to spread fake information are more and more sophisticated! 

Zhang Xida, from Xiamen:

1. No Chinese accent, knows Taiwanese dialect.

2. Knows Taiwanese people TV habits.

3. Has penetrated Taiwanese radio.

4. Chinese pro-Han Kuo-yu journalist.”283

At this point, Zhang Xida’s action could have been an independent initiative. But this 

case shows that language is not sufficient as a barrier to protect Taiwan from disin-

formation coming from China. But, while Zhang Xida’s case indicates that the Chinese 

279. http://archive.md/9SayI.

280. His HelloTaiwan profile announced that he participated in at least four other shows http:// archive.md/929IO. 

On the boat, see http://www.hellotw.com/mnkj/xmbjb/201212/t20121202_797683. htm. End of service in 2018: 

http://archive.md/QQyC8.

281. Full formulation: “台湾当局经济主管部门官方网站”.

282. See https://www.ftvnews.com.tw/news/detail/2019A27W0011.

283. http://archive.ph/ZrvlZ. 

470

can to launch believable disinformation campaigns, it also reveals that their initiatives 

lack sophistication. It was way too easy to find Zhang Xida’s real identity: he could have 

taken the time to construct a robust backstory and to delete any trace of his activity in 

China.

E. The Li Jie Case (2019)

On June 18, 2019, an Internet user called Li Jie (李杰, also transcribed as “Li Chieh”) 

circulated a text on several Facebook groups stating that the Tsai administration had given 

1 billion Taiwanese dollars (€29.5 million) to support the “violent” protests in Hong Kong, 

but that it had refused to give anything for the prevention and the fight against dengue fever 

in Kaohsiung (see screenshots below). 

His posts gathered between 600 and 800 “likes” on the groups, and they were shared 

between 300 and 800 times, all within less than 24 hours. The Taiwanese authorities 

refuted the claim as early as the next day, opened an investigation, and revealed that 

the IP address belonged to an Internet user who had already been reported for a sim-

ilar initiative the year before.284 Li Jie’s profile was thus suspended, and his posts were 

deleted. From screenshots captured before he was suspended, we learned that Li Jie 

had signed up to Facebook in July 2018 and presented himself as an inhabitant of 

Kaohsiung.

On the left: “The violent protests in Hong Kong received an aid of one billion [Taiwanese dollars] from Tsai’s government [but] 

Kaohsiung did not receive anything to prevent and fight the dengue fever.” 

On the right: “Open your eyes wide, one billion!!! It was one billion!!! We have enough money for others to spend it, 

but not one cent to save our own population! Tsai’s government sent one billion [Taiwanese dollars] 

to support the protests against the amendment to the Extradition Law 

by the Hong Kong government, and receives severe warnings from mainland China.” 

Source: Liberty Times Net. 

The cases of dengue fever in Kaohsiung had already sparked controversy between KMT 

supporters who, out of sheer political calculation, criticized the DPP for not allocating 

enough money to dengue prevention in Kaohsiung; on their part, DPP supporters criti-

cized how Han Kuo-yu dealt with the crisis.285

At least three of the Facebook groups on which Li Jie spread the fake news were 

identified as overtly anti-DPP or pro-KMT. A first group was created in February and 

284. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiZel8VP6oM.

285. “高雄” 绿委 “用登革热” 黑韩”遭台网友狠批”, Taihainet.com. http://www.taihainet.com/news/twnews/

twdnsz/2019-06-18/2275003.html.

471

had more than 23,500 members.286 It was fully aligned with the positions adopted by CTi 

TV host Joyce Huang (黃智賢), known for her pro-unification stances.

Screenshot from the description of the pro-Joyce Huang group: 

“[the] analysis of Ms. Joyce Huang is rational and pertinent, 

always grounded in evidence and it deserves to be praised. 

Together with our new website of Confucian commentaries [Rujiawang], she can support us 

and unmask the absurdities and lies of the so-called Taiwanese who are actually Japanese.” 

With more than 32,000 members,287 another group was created in March 2018 to sup-

port Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜), the KMT mayor of New Taipei, in his campaign for the 2018 

provincial elections. Thanks to its page’s current cover picture, we can see that the group 

also supported Han Kuo-yu’s 2020 presidential bid.

Screenshot of the Facebook page that endorsed Hou Yu-ih.

The third group,288 with a community of 54,000 members, was created in April 2014 

to support the KMT politician Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱). The group changed its name 

in August 2019, signaling its direct support for Han Kuo-yu, seen below with Hung. The 

group’s earlier description called for everyone to come together against “pro-independence 

people and fascists.”

Screenshot of the Facebook page supporting Han Kuo-yu and Hung Hsiu-chu.

286. See Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/436685729870298/.

287. See the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2034858436836458/.

288. See the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/706676622729838/.

472

C

O

N

Hence, it is hardly surprising that Li Jie’s posts were well-received in these groups, in 

which several members expressed their opposition to the protests in Hong Kong.

We know little on “Li Jie,” whose Facebook profile is no longer available, except that 

his name was written in simplified, non-traditional characters. This detail fed speculations 

that Li Jie, a common name in Chinese, was a PRC agent masquerading as Taiwanese and 

claiming to be from Kaohsiung, or at least as living there.

Moreover, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) revealed 

that Li Jie’s IP address was the same as Li Ronggui’s (李榮

貴, also transcribed as “Li Jung-kuei”), and located in 

Singapore.289 According to the CIB, it likely to be the same 

person. Li Ronggui’s profile spread a number of false news tar-

geting Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), a DPP candidate at the provin-

cial elections for the city of Kaohsiung in 2018; for example, it 

claimed that he and his father owned foreign assets worth 2.2 

billion Taiwanese dollars (€65 million).290 Han Kuo-yu won the 

election, but it is impossible to assess whether these manipula-

tions played a role in the KMT candidate’s victory.

“How much money did this fucking DPP embezzled from the people! Wellington Koo inspected the foreign assets 

of KMT leaders without finding anything abnormal, but he found surprises on the DPP side, the Chens, 

father and son, from Kaohsiung, hid 2.2 billion abroad.”