A few months after Taiwanese NGO worker Cynthia Iunn bought a book titled “If China Attacks” at a Taiwanese bookstore in February, she began receiving calls from strange numbers.

In mid-May she decided to answer one of them.

“I ended up speaking to three different people and even though they claimed to be from Taiwan, they were clearly Chinese,” Iunn told Al Jazeera.

At first she thought it was a scam and assumed the conversation would eventually turn to her credit card information or banking details.

Instead, Iunn was surprised when the person on the other end revealed that she knew her full name, the name of the book she ordered in February, and the location from where she ordered it.

According to Iunn, they were curious what she thought of “If China Attacks” and why she bought the book in the first place.

“They also wanted to let me 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, the Taiwanese armed forces would be no match for the Chinese military.

At this point, Iunn realized that she was exposed to China’s cognitive warfare.

Beijing views Taiwan as part of China and has not ruled out using force to achieve its goal of bringing the self-governing democratic island under its control.

The best way to avoid war, Iunn was told, would be to vote for the opposition Kuomintang Party (KMT) rather than the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in January’s presidential and parliamentary elections. 13.

The KMT wants friendlier relations between Taiwan and China, while Beijing has refused to enter into dialogue with the DPP, which the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) describes as “separatist.” The DPP rejects such allegations and says it is up to the Taiwanese people to decide their leadership and future.

Iunn found the call itself ridiculous, but she also worried that the callers were able to gather so much personal information about her.

“For people like me from the CCP, it felt like a message that we know who you are and that you are against China,” Iunn said.

“And that’s pretty scary.”

Make the “right choice”.

Beijing has made no secret of the fact that it is taking an active stance on the Taiwan elections.

Chinese officials called the election a “choice between peace and war,” a KMT slogan, and urged Taiwan’s people to make the “right choice.”

During a meeting in China in February between Beijing Taiwan Affairs Office chief Song Tao and KMT Vice Chairman Hsia Li-yan, Tao told Hsia that China was willing to build closer ties with the party.

Meanwhile, the CCP has refused to engage in dialogue with the DPP government of incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen since its first election in 2016.

Instead, Beijing has bypassed the Taiwanese government to engage directly with local Taiwanese leaders and officials.

Earlier this year, Chinese authorities exempted a county in southeastern Taiwan from a ban on imports of Taiwanese custard apples. The exemption came into effect after a KMT commissioner from the county visited China twice.

More than a thousand local Taiwanese leaders have traveled to China recently – many more than in the run-up to the last national election.

Recently, district prosecutors across Taiwan have opened investigations into hundreds of these cases amid evidence that Beijing either partially or fully covered the costs of these trips.

Prominent public figures have also been the target of alleged Chinese activities in the run-up to the elections.

In October, Chinese state newspaper Global Times reported that Chinese authorities had launched an operation control probe in the activities of the Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn, which generates around 70 percent of its sales with products manufactured in China.

The announcement came two months after billionaire founder and former Foxconn CEO Terry Gou declared his own independent candidacy for president – a move that the Global Times suggested would curry favor with the opposition camp and the “ruling secessionist DPP” would divide.

After the tax investigation became public, Terry Gou canceled several campaign events and dropped out of the race a few weeks later.

Also in October, Chinese authorities extended an investigation into “Taiwan’s trade barriers to China” until January 12 – the day before the election.

Such decisions so close to the election are no coincidence, according to Fang-Yu Chen, an assistant professor at Soochow University in Taipei who studies political relations between China and Taiwan.

“This is part of an organized Chinese effort to create chaos, incite distrust and spread discontent with the current DPP government,” Chen said.

Online campaigns

This is not the first time there have been reports of increased anti-Taiwan activity in the run-up to an election. Interference efforts were also reported in the 2018 local elections and the 2020 presidential election.

As in previous surveys, this time the efforts focus on cyber attacks and Disinformation campaigns.

Google warned in early December of a huge increase in Chinese cyberattacks over the past six months targeting Taiwan’s defense sector, private industry and the government.

In August, Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, cracked down on a Chinese influence campaign involving more than 7,500 accounts across various platforms. This was the company’s largest operation of its kind to date. Many of the accounts targeted Taiwan.

There have also been cases of TikTok being used to spread disinformation among Taiwanese users while monitoring their activities, according to a French documentary that aired in early December.

Ai-Men Lau is a research analyst at the Taiwan-based organization Doublethink Lab, which tracks malicious Chinese influence operations and disinformation campaigns and their impact.

Lau told Al Jazeera that while it can be difficult to trace much of the manipulative content or disinformation directly to China, there are often signs pointing in that direction.

“Some suspicious accounts are only active during Chinese office hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with a lunch break in between, and post media-only content more than 200 times a day,” she said.

“Unless that’s your job, it’s not natural human behavior.”

At the same time, according to Lau, Chinese disinformation tactics have also evolved.

“We see the PRC increasingly using Taiwanese voices such as journalists, local representatives and social media influencers to convey its message,” she said, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

This makes it difficult to distinguish a personal opinion from planted or spread Chinese disinformation, which in turn makes it difficult to counter such disinformation.

“It also makes Chinese involvement much more covert,” Lau added.

A coordinated effort

Despite the more covert nature, Taiwanese intelligence recently said that the anti-Taiwan interference activities were coordinated by top Communist Party leaders.

According to the intelligence agency, CCP fourth-ranking leader Wang Huning held a meeting between certain ministries and agencies in early December to ensure the effectiveness of various electoral efforts in Taiwan.

Recent episodes show signs of a more integrated Chinese approach.

For example, protests in Taipei against a visit by a US arms manufacturer in which participants were paid by Chinese proxies, fake news about US plans to destroy Taiwan, and a controversy surrounding an upcoming bilateral agreement between India and Taiwan. Cases in which Chinese engagement took different forms in various online and offline spaces and attempted to exploit existing local grievances.

“Chinese activities have become increasingly sophisticated, particularly in terms of capitalizing on existing problems and concerns in Taiwan,” said Chen of Soochow University.

According to Doublethink Lab’s Lau, disinformation campaigns that exploit existing grievances threaten to increase polarization in Taiwan and could ultimately weaken Taiwanese society.

“Ultimately it’s about undermining resistance to Chinese annexation of the island,” she said.

The extent and impact of Beijing’s evolving campaigns will only be fully known after the election ends, but Iunn believes Chinese attempts to manipulate and influence Taiwanese voters will only increase as the election date approaches.

“They will try to influence us as much as possible,” she said.