China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

In July one of Taiwan’s top newspapers, , published a story based on supposedly leaked minutes from a secret government meeting. America had asked to make biological weapons at a lab run by the island’s defence ministry, the report claimed. Taiwanese and American officials denied it. The allegedly leaked minutes, it transpired, were not written in the usual style of Taiwanese government records. They were filled with official-sounding phrases that are used in mainland China, but not in Taiwan.This was probably Chinese disinformation, Taiwanese officials said. Yet the story spread to Taiwanese talk shows and influencers. It soon evolved into a wilder claim: Taiwan was going to collect 150,000 samples of Taiwanese blood and hand them to the Americans, so they could develop a virus to kill Chinese people.