Taiwan Security Bureau Flags 48% Rise in Chinese Disinformation

What changed

Taiwan’s National Security Bureau says China sent more than 2.5 million disputed or false information items targeting Taiwan in the first nine months of 2026, up 48% from more than 1.69 million a year earlier.

The activity focused on energy, food security, defense policy and local candidates ahead of November’s elections for city mayors and county magistrates. The bureau says Beijing used state media, AI-generated videos, fake accounts, content farms and coordinated comments across Facebook, Threads, YouTube and online forums.

Why it matters

This is an election operation built to make ordinary arguments feel larger, angrier and harder to untangle. A claim about power supplies or food security can be pushed alongside attacks on a candidate, then made to look popular through waves of coordinated comments.

Taiwan’s security officials are also seeing pressure on the systems that run government. Chinese cyberattacks on Taiwanese agencies averaged 2.58 million a day during the same period. Detected threats reached 185.6 million in July and 106.4 million in August.

The reported activity does not show whether voters changed their minds or whether election results were affected. But it does show a widening contest over the information environment surrounding the vote, with AI giving Beijing more ways to study current affairs, candidate policies and polling data before shaping messages for particular audiences.