We understand democratic erosion as democratically elected leaders eroding the mechanisms of fair democracy after entering office. What happens when the threat is external? As the percentage of citizens who identify as “Taiwanese” instead of “Chinese” grows, so do the efforts of mainland China to push for unification. In the age of the internet, China has moved to employ a new weapon: disinformation.

It’s not just that China is promoting anti-US sentiments. This kind of foreign disinformation aggressively undermines democratic legitimacy and compromises free and fair elections by targeting citizens. Bots spreading pro-authoritarian narratives will weaken democracy in the same way an elected leader would. We must consider the China-Taiwan case in the definition of democratic erosion. 

China’s Taiwanese Disinformation Campaign and Its Effects

Misinformation refers to misleading and incorrect information. Disinformation is information deliberately intended to deceive its audiences, like propaganda. Taiwan’s National Security Bureau (NSB) published a report in 2024 detailing a 60% increase in Chinese disinformation, with young people being the primary targets. 

The NSB identified 28,216 fake accounts in total. These accounts spread altered memes and videos. They overwhelm comment sections. Other strategies include impersonating Taiwanese military officials and citizens via hacking their accounts. Artificial intelligence is used to create deepfakes of Taiwanese politicians and their speeches. 

In an updated 2025 report, the security bureau stated it detected over half a million pieces of “controversial information” on media platforms such as TikTok and Facebook. This report also provides detailed evidence of China’s use of artificial intelligence to generate and spread polarizing messages. 

Chinese disinformation commonly targets Taiwan-U.S. relations. It appears to ramp up during election season. During the 2020 presidential election, China spread rumors that President Tsai Ing-Wen’s doctoral degree was fake. CCP sources also claimed that her victory was rigged by the CIA. Two rumors blasted into the public eye before the 2024 legislative and presidential elections. Number one: poisonous pork was being imported from the U.S. and passed off as Taiwanese. Number two: blood was secretly being stolen from Taiwanese citizens and given to the U.S. to develop bioweapons against China. 

Skepticism of the safety quality of U.S. pork has long been debated among Taiwanese citizens, but it coincidentally reemerged from obscurity just before an important presidential election. Although President Tsai Ing-Wen won by a wide margin, the large wave of anti-Democratic Progressive Party propaganda was deeply concerning to many.

According to an anti-disinformation group with the Taiwan FactCheck Center, the years of disinformation and propaganda have already created mistrust and polarised the exhausted Taiwanese citizens. Instead of trusting facts, citizens are more likely to judge the credibility of a statement based on their political affiliation.

Background

Taiwan’s sovereignty has long been a point of contention between Taiwan and mainland China. The Qing Empire officially controlled Taiwan in the 17th century. It was then taken by Japan, which relinquished it after Japan’s World War Two defeat. After the conflict between General Chiang Kai-Shek’s nationalist forces and Mao Zedong’s communist forces, Chiang’s forces fled in defeat to Taiwan and established the Republic of China. 

Both sides of the conflict point to these historical factors as arguments for whether or not Taiwan is an independent and sovereign entity. The People’s Republic of China (mainland China) maintains that Taiwan belongs to it. 

Taiwanese Resistance

Taiwanese civil-society organizations are ramping up their efforts to discredit false news and educate citizens about the dangers of spreading false information. Services such as Taiwan FactCheck Center help to promote transparency and validate public claims. 

Taiwan also passed the Radio and Television Act and the Anti-Infiltration Act, and is currently working on legislation that would strengthen punishment against online fraud and cybercrimes. If these bills pass, revenue-earning social media companies operating in Taiwan would have to maintain legal representatives to answer government questions about moderating certain content. 

Implications for Taiwanese and Global Democracy 

Because of financial reasons, tech giants like Google, Meta, and X have fired employees dedicated to fighting disinformation. Authoritarian regimes are more than happy to fill these information gaps left behind. 

We are seeing one of the foundational concepts of democracy, free and fair elections, being attacked in real time. But, instead of from a national political force, this attack comes from an outside authoritarian influence. Without accurate information and trust in the electoral system, free and fair elections cannot happen. When a foreign power tries to influence elections, it leads to a decrease in legitimacy and an increase in polarization.

When trust in democratic institutions has been efficiently eroded, authoritarian actors can more easily fill that gap. This is exactly what China hopes to accomplish by sowing doubt within Taiwan-U.S. relations. 

Taiwan is both figuratively and literally a separation between authoritarianism and democracy. It is part of the “first island chain”, an area of U.S.-friendly territories that separates China and the U.S. Taiwan is also responsible for manufacturing the electronic chips that power much of the world’s devices. If China were to take Taiwan, it would have control over a driver of the global economy, and it would become that much easier for China to assert global control and challenge the U.S.