A few months after Taiwanese NGO worker Cynthia Iunn bought a book titled If China Attacks from a Taiwanese bookstore in February, she started to get calls from strange numbers.
In the middle of May, she decided to answer one of them.
“I ended up talking to three different people and although they pretended to be from Taiwan, they were very clearly Chinese,” Iunn told Al Jazeera.
Initially, she thought it was a scam and expected the conversation to eventually turn to her credit card information or bank details.
Instead, Iunn was surprised when the person on the other end revealed that they knew her full name, the name of the book she had ordered in February and where she had ordered it from.
According to Iunn, they were curious about what she thought of If China Attacks and why she had bought the book in the first place.
“They also wanted me to know that the book contained inappropriate and sensitive content and was a piece of propaganda,” she recalled.
The person also told her that in the event of a war between China and Taiwan, Taiwanese forces would be no match for the Chinese military.
At that point, Iunn realised that she was being subjected to Chinese cognitive warfare.
Beijing considers Taiwan to be part of China and has not ruled out using force to achieve its goal of bringing the self-ruled democratic island under its control.
The best way to avoid a war, Iunn was told, would be for her to vote for the opposition party, Kuomintang (KMT), rather than the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the presidential and legislative elections that will take place on January 13.
The KMT wants friendlier relations between Taiwan and China while Beijing has refused to engage in dialogue with the DPP, which the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claims is “separatist”. The DPP rejects such accusations and says it is up to the people of Taiwan to choose their leaders and their future.
Iunn found the call itself ridiculous but it also left her concerned that the callers had been able to collect so much personal information about her.
“It felt like a message to people like me from the CCP, saying that we know who you are and we know you are against China,” Iunn said.
“And that is quite frightening.”
Making the ‘right choice’
Beijing has made it no secret that it is taking an active stance regarding the Taiwanese election.
Chinese officials have called the election a “choice between peace and war”, a slogan used by the KMT, and urged the people of Taiwan to make the “right choice”.
During a sit-down in February in China between the head of Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, Song Tao, and KMT deputy chairman, Hsia Li-yan, Tao told Hsia that China was willing to forge closer relations with the party.
Meanwhile, the CCP has refused to engage in dialogue with the DPP administration of incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen since she was first elected in 2016.
Instead, Beijing has bypassed the Taiwanese government to engage directly with local Taiwanese leaders and officials.
