According to reports, a new ROC defense ministry report says that the PRC’s cognitive warfare and united front efforts to sabotage the Taiwanese have now become “systematic” rather than “isolated.” Really?
The time frame in which this evolution or drastic overhaul is said to have occurred matters. But the reports on the report—I don’t have access to the Defense Ministry’s original report—are not super clear.
The Taipei Times says (May 5, 2026):
The Chinese Communist Party’s cognitive warfare and “united front” tactics against Taiwan have shifted from isolated attempts at infiltration to systematic operations, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s military exercises near Taiwan are becoming increasingly routine, raising the risk of exercises escalating into combat situations, the report said.
The PLA last year launched 3,760 sorties of primary and auxiliary aircraft, including uncrewed systems, up from about 3,060 in 2024, with the aircraft frequently crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entering airspace in southwestern and eastern Taiwan, the report said….
The PLA has also stepped up so-called law enforcement patrols in restricted waters around Taiwan’s outlying islands and near the median line of the Strait, in what the defense ministry described as an attempt by China to frame the Strait as a part of its “internal waters” and undermine Taiwan’s jurisdiction.
The ministry said it would enhance interagency coordination and expand strategic communication with allied nations to counter China’s cognitive warfare narratives and reduce their impact….
To counter disinformation, the ministry has established a platform for people to report disputed or misleading information, while coordinating with fact-checking organizations to issue clarifications, it said.
It has also expanded all-out defense education, including programs on identifying CCP tactics, media literacy, and security and counterintelligence awareness.
The ministry’s report apparently details different kinds of CCP threats, many of which are becoming more frequent, and what the ROC plans to do about them. But if the ministry’s report explains the transition from “isolated” cognitive warfare and/or united front tactics to “systematic” cognitive warfare and/or united front tactics or what “isolated” cognitive warfare and united front work looked like, the Taipei Times does not pass these explanations along.
Red traps
Also on May 5, Taiwan News reports that the Ministry of National Defense is warning that “China united front tactics have shifted to systematic operations” and that the ministry has in response launched a mechanism for addressing the CCP’s false information. It has produced programs “to identify Chinese ‘red traps,’ build media literacy, and raise counterintelligence awareness.”
PLA military exercises around Taiwan have become more routine and more intrusive, and the ROC will be expanding joint defense drills “designed to test command-and-staff operations, interservice coordination, and joint mechanisms, while ensuring coordination between supporting and supported units, and reducing operational risks.”
That’s all fine. But I suspect—I could be wrong, I haven’t seen the ministry’s report—that the ministry is trying to hint that its big new initiatives to counter the CCP’s cognitive warfare and attempts at infiltration are warranted by a major expansion or “systematization” of these CCP efforts. Might the reality be merely that the ROC should have gotten around to implementing the new counterinitiatives much sooner?
