By Chen Meihua | 2025-11-19

Beijing has stepped up its rhetoric on "peaceful reunification" with Taiwan, launching coordinated legal, media and psychological campaigns to assert that the island "belongs to China".

From October 26-28, China's state news agency Xinhua ran a three-part series under the pen name Zhong Taiwen arguing that Taiwan is part of China in law and that reunification is "inevitable". The series followed the 80th anniversary of Taiwan's retrocession and preceded a Trump–Xi meeting.

In the run-up, Beijing issued a position paper on United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758, launched a traditional-character Facebook page to court Taiwanese users, declared October 25 the "Commemoration Day of Taiwan's Restoration" and featured top political advisor Wang Huning touting "seven improvements after reunification," all suggesting broad mobilization on Taiwan policy.

The first article in the Xinhua series revisits wartime documents such as the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Declaration to claim "Taiwan's status as a part of China is already established". It again misinterprets Resolution 2758, insisting that it proves "Taiwan belongs to China".

The second article promises that after "reunification," Taiwan's "current social institutions and way of life will be respected" while Beijing implements "patriots governing Taiwan." It says that "defense budgets will no longer pay for 'Taiwan independence' separatism" and assures people on both sides can avoid "risks of war" and enjoy livelihood gains.

'Coercion with force'

"We are able to deliver a better life to 1.4 billion people, and are surely capable of creating a better future together with our Taiwan compatriots," it says.

The third piece declares "the only path for Taiwan is full reunification with the motherland," urging both sides to "sit down for dialogue and work out a reasonable 'two systems' approach for Taiwan."

Chen Fang-yu, an associate professor of political science at Soochow University, told Focus that the Xinhua articles deliver two main messages: making Taiwan a legal part of China and renewing the call for "peaceful reunification." Accepting this narrative, he said, means reunification to "resolve the Taiwan issue," while refusal leads to coercive force.

Chen noted that Taiwan has never been ruled by the People's Republic of China. Yet, Beijing now claims " that people in Taiwan have aspired to be Chinese since 1895 and that the Chinese Communist Party "inherited" Taiwan in 1949, a narrative he called "contrary to facts".

False narrative

Raymond Chen-En Sung, a board member of the Taiwan National Security Institute, called the series a "war of rhetoric" and "legal warfare" riddled with loopholes. Chen Li-fu of the Taiwan Youth Generation Exchange Association described its arguments as full of logical fallacies.

Chen Li-fu said China's domestic realities undercut the Xinhua articles' promises, noting that official 2023 data still show hundreds of millions of people living on less than 1,000 yuan ($141) a month.

Sung argued that Taiwan is far superior to China in quality of life and rights protections, and that reunification would mean a "downgrade of rights" for people in Taiwan.

Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the American Institute in Taiwan have repeatedly rebutted Beijing's narrative. Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said in July that the Treaty of San Francisco, which has the force of international law, superseded the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Declaration after the Second World War, and that "the People's Republic of China has never ruled Taiwan." In October the ministry again condemned China for distorting Resolution 2758 and misleading international opinion.

The United States has echoed Taipei's position. In September, an AIT spokesperson said Beijing was misrepresenting historical documents to justify coercion against Taiwan and that its narrative was "false," stressing that those documents never determined Taiwan's ultimate political status.

Sung said Xinhua's commentaries are not convincing but show Beijing's plan to flood public discourse and entrench its narrative using propaganda and artificial intelligence. This psychological warfare, he argued, is meant to weaken the will to resist and convince Taiwanese that "resistance is futile or too costly," paving the way for reunification.

The articles say defense budgets would shift from "Taiwan independence" to social programs, which Chen Li-fu called a demand that Taiwan "put down its weapons and submit."

The series also promises to introduce a "rule by patriots" framework in Taiwan after reunification. Chen Fang-yu said this is an extension of Beijing's "patriots governing Hong Kong" model, which in practice demands loyalty to the Communist Party above all else. "Ultimately, this 'Taiwan solution' still amounts to one country, one system," he said.

Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council strongly condemned what it called Beijing's attempt to turn Taiwan into another Hong Kong. It said Hong Kong's experience shows that the so-called patriots are simply loyalists approved by the Communist Party, while those who do not receive its approval can lose their right to participate in politics or face suppression.