TAIPEI, Taiwan — Two Taiwanese social media influencers concerned about the persistent and evolving tactics that Communist China is bringing to bear against their homeland have released the second part of a popular documentary, which premiered on YouTube in the final days of 2024.
On Saturday, Dec. 28, the documentary’s producers Ba Jiong (八炯) and “Minnan Wolf” Chen Po-yuan (陳柏源), gave a lengthy press conference hosted by Formosa TV News Network, in which they described their motivations and methods for producing the “Second Documentary Episode Unveiling China’s United Front Efforts Against Taiwan.”
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which seized power over mainland China in 1949, sees the democratically governed island of Taiwan as a rightful part of its territory, and insists on its eventual “reunification” with the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
In addition to military intimidation, Beijing also places heavy emphasis on what in CCP political theory is known as “united front” work. The “United Front” refers to the CCP’s efforts to build and wield influence, especially with people, organizations, and regions not yet under communist control.
In the first part, released Dec. 6, Ba Jiong and Chen, a rapper who previously took a pro-CCP stance before becoming disillusioned with the regime, showed how Chen went undercover to China’s Fujian Province to reveal the methods the Party uses to groom and co-opt Taiwanese influencers. The 40-minute video was viewed 2.9 million times in three weeks and led to widespread discussion in Taiwan.
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These include paying Taiwanese influencers to produce United Front propaganda videos, and even directing individuals to return to Taiwan to participate in political parties and elections to sway it in a pro-CCP direction.
The duo’s second instalment, running about an hour, reveals more evidence about Communist China’s newest “United Front” work towards Taiwan, including how Beijing is quietly pushing citizens of the island to apply for PRC household residency cards — a move that furthers the Communist Party’s infiltration of Taiwanese society.
Sounding the alarm on the CCP’s ‘united front’
While the importance of “united front” work is explicitly laid in the writings of Mao Zedong and other communist leaders, and the phenomenon is often used to criticize alleged CCP influence overseas, Ba Jiong and Chen Po-yuan’s work is different in that using Chen’s unique position, they were able to gain direct evidence of the United Front’s operations concerning Taiwan.
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Ba Jiong, who originally worked as a photographer, switched to sounding the alarm on CCP influence in Taiwan in recent years on his YouTube channel FunTV. The handle “Ba Jiong” sounds similar to the Chinese word for “89” — a reference to the 1989 Chinese democracy movement and the Tiananmen Massacre of that June 4, when the CCP deployed troops to crush the movement.
While growing numbers of Taiwanese, especially youth, do not see themselves as Chinese, this has not prevented the CCP from using social media and other means to make political inroads into Taiwan’s popular culture.
In Chen Po-yuan’s case, he was raised with positive sentiments about Chinese culture and was impressed by the power and apparent achievements of the Communist Party in ruling China.
But being backstabbed and accused by his colleagues of being pro-Taiwan independence convinced Chen that he could no longer support the CCP. He joined Ba Jiong, who had earlier criticized him, in championing Taiwan’s democracy against the totalitarian mainland Chinese regime.
Freedom versus tyranny
By various estimates, the CCP has been responsible for the deaths of around 80 million people, making it the deadliest regime in history.
Despite having its own government, military, and other state institutions, Taiwan is not officially recognized by most countries. It is formally governed as the Republic of China (ROC), which used to run all of China before retreating to Taiwan in the face of crushing defeats on the mainland by the communist forces. In the 1970s, the United Nations voted to drop recognition of the ROC in favor of the PRC; the United States also recognized Communist China as it was eager to court Beijing as an ally against the Soviet Union.
In today’s Taiwan, the CCP works with politicians and parties who view closer ties with mainland China as beneficial to Taiwan’s economic development, while championing the shared Chinese ethnicity and culture on the two sides of the strait.
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Ba Jiong is also a vocal critic of Taiwan’s Kuomintang party, which fought the CCP bitterly while ruling the ROC on mainland China, but was goaded on several occasions into joining the communists “United Front” — once to achieve a shaky unification of China in the 1920s and again in the 1930s following Imperial Japan’s invasion.
After Taiwan’s transition to democracy in the 1990s, the Kuomintang again took a conciliatory stance towards the CCP, promoting cross-strait ties; the party and its leadership rarely make direct criticisms of mainland China.
Speaking on NTD Television’s “Pinnacle View” program aired on Jan. 8, 2025, Ba Jiong said that he sees the newest round of collaboration between the Kuomintang and CCP as a “third United Front.”
Referring to two prominent Kuomintang leaders of the 20th century, “Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo, they experienced first-hand the maliciousness of the Communist Party, so they understood that the best way of protecting the Republic of China was simply to not have any dealings with [the CCP],” Ba Jiong told host Shi Shan.
Today, while Kuomintang politicians who believe they are extracting benefits in working with the CCP see Taiwan’s other parties as their main opponents, Ba Jiong cautioned against this approach. According to the CCP’s own political doctrine, the Kuomintang is no genuine ally, but merely a “secondary enemy” to be vanquished once the “main enemy” — that is, pro-independence Taiwanese such as the ruling Democratic Progressive Party — are defeated.
Going undercover in China
Because Chen Po-yuan was still regarded as a “little pink” — that is, a nationalist pro-CCP youth — when he began collaborating with Ba Jiong, he was able to travel to mainland China and collect footage and other information for their documentary.
Chen shared his personal experiences visiting CCP-promoted “Taiwanese youth bases,” only to discover that many of these so-called facilities were merely empty shells housing fake companies. The documentary also exposes the operational details of local collaborators in Taiwan and their methods of enticing Taiwanese people to relocate to China, debunking the glossy image portrayed by the CCP’s propaganda.
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Perhaps surprisingly, much of the CCP’s dealings with Taiwanese influencers do not involve politics or even any kind of direction. Instead, organizations with links to the Chinese state merely invite Taiwanese to tour mainland China and give their candid impressions.
Only after cultivating such innocuous, informal relationships do representatives of the CCP’s united front work target Taiwanese for further manipulation, such as providing them special privileges or money.
Chen described the risks involved in gathering information and footage for the documentary, and noted that he can no longer travel to mainland China.
Blurring the lines between Taiwan and Communist China
In the second part of the documentary, which currently has around 2 million views, Ba Jiong and Chen Po-yuan scrutinized a hitherto little-noticed phenomenon — that of Taiwan (ROC) citizens gaining PRC residency cards.
According to their investigations, such status has been granted to at least 100,000 Taiwanese, which could help the CCP cement its claim that ROC citizens are rightfully PRC nationals, as well as confuse the loyalties of Taiwanese holding mainland residency.
Ba Jiong noted that the residency cards in question are not the special travel visas granted to Taiwan citizens, but the same as the residential IDs issued by the mainland Chinese authorities to PRC citizens.
Despite the relatively small number of Taiwanese allegedly granted PRC residency, the CCP will have prioritized high-value individuals, such as business, community, or political leaders for such status, given their outsized influence on Taiwan.
Following the revelations, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) addressed the concerns raised in Ba Jiong and Chen Po-yuan’s documentary, saying on Dec. 29 that the ROC government has noted the various “united front” tactics employed by the CCP.
It emphasized that according to ROC law, residents of the Taiwan area are prohibited from taking up PRC residency or obtaining PRC passports.
The CCP’s united front strategy is not about “making friends” but “offering benefits,” the MAC warned, while promising to investigate and take strict action against those involved in illegal cross-strait activities.
The Taiwanese government body also condemned CCP-related departments, calling on them to stop engaging in “ugly measures that disrupt Taiwan’s stability and sow division under the guise of exchanges.”
On the 29th, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) also responded to Bajiong’s documentary. The MAC emphasized that the government has noted the various tactics of the CCP’s United Front and Taiwan-related systems presented in the self-produced video on the 28th.
