Beijing pairs KMT outreach with disinformation push ahead of Taiwan elections
Beijing is pairing intensive outreach to Taiwan’s Kuomintang opposition with an online influence operation across digital spaces, in what Chiu Chui-cheng, minister of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, described as a “rare window of opportunity” for Chinese leader Xi Jinping during President Trump’s second term. “They think Trump’s unpredictability on U.S. commitments gives Xi more room to operate,” Chiu told the Wall Street Journal.
The courtship centers on Cheng Li-wun, a 56-year-old former legislator and TV talk-show host who emerged unexpectedly last year as chairwoman of the KMT and a possible 2028 presidential candidate. Tall and telegenic, with smartly tailored suits, Cheng has a delivery so forceful that organizers of a press briefing late last year stopped to re-test three microphones before concluding she simply speaks at what local journalists described as “talk-show volume.” She has made warmer relations with Beijing a priority. “Many friends in the international media have asked me whether I am pro-China or pro-U.S.,” Cheng said during a party meeting in Taipei. “I ask in return: Why can’t I choose both? Why must I choose a side?” She added: “We will never forget the friendship and generosity of the United States. But at the same time, mainland China is our family, and we could never bring ourselves to harm our own flesh and blood.” Cheng and her supporters say she has no plans to bend to Beijing and simply wants to promote better relations. The KMT said in a statement that “the KMT’s approach has consistently been guided by Taiwan’s interests, with the goal of preserving peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait while safeguarding Taiwan’s democracy and way of life.”
In April, Cheng traveled to mainland China for a red-carpet six-day tour — the first such visit by a major Taiwanese party leader since a previous KMT head went in 2016. Officials gave her high-level meetings and a Shanghai river cruise. Her itinerary included multiple demonstrations of Chinese technological muscle, including an automated deep-water container port in Shanghai and the assembly line of jet maker Comac. At Meituan’s headquarters, Cheng ordered pearl milk tea on her phone, delivered by drone, before the company’s chairman, Wang Xing, presented her with a plush kangaroo, the corporate mascot. “I must bring the doll back to Taiwan. I also want to bring Meituan back to Taiwan,” she said — a nod to importing the mainland’s tech-driven delivery services. Cheng capped the trip with an audience with Xi, later describing his hands as “soft as clouds.”
The trip was choreographed with Beijing’s help. Details of the trip were “all up to them,” said Alexander Huang, a former director of the KMT’s Department of International Affairs, referring to Chinese officials. Months earlier, Chinese officials met with KMT negotiators to hammer out language Cheng would use, and Cheng shared advance copies of prepared remarks in which she made clear she opposed independence for Taiwan, to Xi’s approval, people familiar with the matter said. Cheng has told associates she didn’t raise reunification with Xi, people familiar with the matter said, though she used language that appeared to move the KMT closer to Beijing’s interpretation of cross-strait relations.
A pivotal moment came when Cheng addressed the 1992 Consensus — a tacit understanding reached by negotiators for Beijing and Taipei in 1992 that has anchored cross-strait relations for decades. Beijing reads the formula as meaning Taiwan awaits return to the mainland. The KMT has traditionally insisted on “respective interpretations” of what “one China” means. In 2019, Xi tied the understanding to unification and called for exploring a “one country, two systems” model for Taiwan. In her China visit, Cheng landed on a formula closer to Xi’s reading, embracing the idea of “one China,” dropping the KMT’s traditional insistence on “respective interpretations” of the deal, and stressing opposition to independence.
Many KMT members and other Taiwanese were unsettled. Cheng rejected the criticism, framing her approach as necessary to avoid conflict rather than a capitulation to Beijing. Cheng’s position is “solid but small,” said Huang, the former senior KMT official. “Most party members, including younger ones, still regard Beijing as just communists.”
Trump has complicated Beijing’s task in one respect and eased it in another. He has at times echoed Chinese talking points on Taiwan’s government and repeatedly accused Taiwan of having stolen the U.S. semiconductor industry — a charge Taipei rejects. He has withheld approval on a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan, describing the package as a “good bargaining chip” in negotiations with China. A recent Brookings Institution poll found that only 24% of Taiwanese voters consider the U.S. a trustworthy ally.
In some ways, U.S.-Taiwan ties have deepened. Taiwan has begun acknowledging long-concealed U.S. military training on the island, and American officials have publicly noted their cooperation with the Taiwanese coast guard — a signal to Beijing that the relationship remains solid.
Xi, 73, has his own pressures. Policy advisers in Beijing said he feels urgency to deliver progress on Taiwan — a historical mission central to his legitimacy. Although he remains firmly in power, he faces a pivotal Communist Party congress next year in which questions of succession loom. People familiar with his thinking said he worries an invasion could turn into a quagmire; persuading more Taiwanese to reconcile with Beijing could let him show momentum without the dangers of war.
Some of Cheng’s first actions as party leader appeared calculated to please Beijing. In November, she laid flowers at a memorial for victims of the White Terror — the KMT’s own postwar political-repression campaign — where those honored included Wu Shi, a Communist Party spy who was executed by Taiwan in 1950 and is celebrated as a martyr in Beijing. Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, accused Cheng of “failing to distinguish friend from foe,” while Beijing was delighted, people familiar with the matter said. The KMT, in a statement to the Journal, said Cheng’s attendance was meant “to remember history, cherish peace, and prevent cross-strait relations from ever descending into war again.”
Founded in the early 20th century, the KMT was led for decades by Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist military commander who fled to Taiwan in 1949 after his defeat by Mao Zedong’s Communist forces. The group ruled Taiwan under martial law before the island’s democratic transition in the late 1980s and 1990s. While officially opposed to immediate unification, the KMT is generally seen as friendlier to Beijing than the DPP, which has ruled Taiwan since 2016 and is loathed by Xi. When the KMT last held Taiwan’s presidency, from 2008 to 2016, it fostered closer economic and political ties with the mainland, including the start of direct cross-strait flights.
Cheng got her start as a student activist in pro-democracy protests against the KMT, advocating Taiwanese independence. She left the Democratic Progressive Party in the early 2000s and joined the KMT — though her embrace of closer ties with China came years later. Her history of shifting positions makes her more useful to Beijing, political observers say, suggesting she is driven more by personal ambition than a firm ideology.
Beijing’s influence efforts extend beyond diplomacy. In addition to courting the KMT, Beijing is flooding digital spaces with content mocking the ruling DPP and amplifying narratives that Washington will abandon the island, leaving China as the only partner Taiwan can trust. Taiwan’s National Security Bureau said in a report earlier this year that Beijing had launched an “all-out” cognitive warfare campaign via online platforms and fake websites. It identified 45,000 suspected accounts in 2025, up from around 28,000 in 2024. One deepfake video, which Taiwanese officials linked to China, fabricated a dialogue between Taiwan President Lai Ching-te and Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim that included the line: “The U.S. is no longer able to contain China, and may trade us away one day.”
Many young Taiwanese haven’t lived through decades of tensions with the mainland, and some embrace Chinese popular culture. Beijing has worked with influencers on YouTube and TikTok, offering them sponsored trips and VIP treatment in exchange for content that echoes Communist Party talking points, according to an Australian Strategic Policy Institute analysis. Taipei restricted access to Xiaohongshu, one of the most popular Chinese social-media platforms, in December amid fears it could be a vehicle for soft-power influence.
Taiwanese security officials said mainland-generated AI disinformation campaigns also targeted last year’s KMT chairmanship race. The officials ultimately determined the campaign helped tilt the election in Cheng’s favor, calling it interference by Beijing in a Taiwanese political party. Ahead of last October’s chairmanship vote, Taiwan’s National Security Bureau flagged 23 suspected YouTube accounts and roughly 1,000 TikTok clips pushing content about the race, its director, Tsai Ming-yen, said. Some of the posts lampooned Cheng’s rivals. Taiwanese authorities traced some of the accounts to Chinese military units. In the end, only about 40% of party members voted, with Cheng getting 50% of those who showed up.
DPP leaders say they have already detected signs Beijing will try to sway the November vote, as it tried to do, largely without success, in the 2024 presidential election. In June, Taiwanese authorities traced a cluster of near-identical Facebook posts, some blaring fake alerts such as “Breaking News — the national emergency alarm went off loudly,” to a military-linked content farm in China’s Hebei province. The goal, an official said, was to build a following that could be activated later to flood the campaign with disinformation.
Beijing has long denied involvement in disinformation campaigns. China’s Foreign Ministry, responding to questions, called Taiwan “the core of China’s core interests.” Military pressure remains a parallel tool. In early August, Beijing said it had imposed traffic control measures on ships passing through the strait’s southern entrance — the latest assertion of jurisdiction over waters around the island.
Public opinion remains a constraint on Beijing’s hopes. Overall support for unification in Taiwan has fallen to under 8%, from 22% three decades ago, according to a long-running National Chengchi University poll. But about 21% of Taiwanese under 20 held a positive view of China in a poll last year by World United Formosans for Independence, the highest of any age group. The risk for Beijing is that it overreaches, deepening resentment of the mainland in Taiwan. Analysts across the island’s political spectrum say public opinion hasn’t fundamentally shifted in favor of unification. Even inside the KMT, there’s worry Cheng reads as too pro-China heading into the local elections later this year.
Xi is expected to keep pressing Trump on Taiwan when the two meet in Washington this week. Chinese policy advisers said his aim is to coax Trump into expressing clearer opposition to Taiwanese independence, further narrowing the space for Taiwan to resist. Taiwan is gearing up for elections in November for mayors and other local positions. A bigger prize for Beijing would be ousting the DPP and replacing it with a Cheng-led KMT in Taiwan’s next presidential race in 2028. Though the DPP maintains an edge in some recent polls, the KMT has strong influence in Taiwan’s local politics and currently controls the legislature. It recently used that advantage to force President Lai’s administration to scale back a $40 billion special defense budget.
Xi’s goal is to “use a genuine believer to move pro-unification forces from the margins of Taiwanese politics into the mainstream,” said Lai I-Chung, a cross-strait analyst at Taipei’s Prospect Foundation. David Sacks, a Taiwan analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations who has met with Cheng in Taipei and New York, said “Xi likely sees Cheng as his best chance to move the KMT in a more overtly pro-China direction.” Although Cheng understands much of her appeal within her party rests on her ability to engage directly with Xi, Sacks said, “in the end, that gives Xi leverage.”