In recent weeks, Beijing announced the establishment of a “Taiwan Retrocession Day”(台灣光復節) and released a series of commentaries under the pseudonym “Zhong Taiwen” (鍾台文) through Xinhua News Agency, covering themes such as “national rejuvenation,” “peaceful reunification,” and “shared cultural roots.” On the surface, these writings appear composed, rational, and conciliatory. Yet they represent something far more strategic: a carefully paced campaign of narrative warfare.

The weapons in this conflict are not missiles, but words. Its objective is not persuasion, but definition. In Beijing’s view, power today is not only exercised through coercion; it is exercised through the ability to shape linguistic reality.

I. The Politics of Language: From “Retrocession” to “Re-Unification”

In the Chinese political lexicon, language is never neutral. By inserting “Taiwan’s retrocession” into its political calendar, Beijing is executing what may be called a linguistic takeover. This narrative reframing packages sovereign ambition in softer terms: replacing “unification” with “retrocession” seeks to fabricate a sense of historical legitimacy and to paint the future not as annexation, but as a “natural return.”

This strategy closely mirrors what happened in Hong Kong. After 1997, the principle of “Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong” gradually yielded to “patriots governing Hong Kong.” Political language was rewritten first; institutions followed; governance structures transformed only after narratives were normalized.

Today, Beijing is applying the same template to Taiwan. Through language, it aims to pre-condition political reality.

For Taiwan, this is not a debate over historical interpretation — it is an act of sovereignty erosion. Once international discourse begins to accept the term “retrocession,” Taiwan’s very existence risks being reframed as an extension of Chinese civilizational continuity.

The sophistication of narrative warfare lies in precisely this: coercion is absent, yet cognitive boundaries subtly shift. Power works not by forcing obedience, but by redefining the parameters of what is thinkable.

II. Rhythm and Purpose: A State-Engineered Narrative Surge

The “Zhong Taiwen” essays did not simply appear organically in the media ecosystem. Their coordinated publication across Xinhua and CCTV reveals a state-level communications operation. The content is wrapped in the language of “public sentiment” and “peace,” but its dual audience and dual purpose are unmistakable:

Domestically, it reinforces nationalist belief and normalizes “reunification” as an inevitable historical trajectory. Internationally, it positions Beijing as the reasonable, peace-seeking party, while delegitimizing Taiwan’s democratic appeals as aberrant or destabilizing.

This is not mere propaganda — it is pre-policy engineering. By repeatedly exporting language such as “peaceful reunification,” “community of shared destiny,” and “blood-ties and heritage,” Beijing constructs a psychological frame of delayed inevitability: unification is not abrupt or coercive, but a patient unfolding of history.

The logic is simple: if audiences are acclimated to a narrative in advance, resistance weakens when policy eventually follows. Language repetition is not rhetorical excess — it is political conditioning.

III. Peace Rhetoric and the Logic of Division

Beijing’s most effective political tool is often its invocation of “peace.” The “Zhong Taiwen” texts emphasize “peaceful development” and “dialogue and win-win cooperation,” projecting calm rationality. Yet they are part of a systematic sequencing strategy: language first, institutions later.

“Peaceful reunification” does not signify renouncing coercion. Rather, it is a cognitive divide-and-rule tactic. If Taipei refuses political talks on Beijing’s terms, China can portray Taiwan as the side undermining peace, while casting itself as the rational actor seeking dialogue.

This rhetorical inversion invites the international community into a false moral equivalence — a “both sides should avoid provocation” trap.

As Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council succinctly stated, Beijing’s so-called “patriots governing Taiwan” is “a Hong Kong model in disguise, devoid of legitimacy.” The point is not literary — it is existential. The “Zhong Taiwen” rhetoric is not about reconciliation, but submission; not about communication, but control.

IV. Strategic Intent: Re-Nationalizing Discourse Sovereignty

The deeper significance of the “Zhong Taiwen” phenomenon lies in Beijing’s effort to re-nationalize discourse sovereignty. This is a long-term political project: reclaiming control over the language through which China, Taiwan, and the world interpret the cross-Strait question.

It operates through three interlocking mechanisms:

1. Cognitive Preemption. Before action, seize semantic territory. When “unification” becomes “retrocession” and “separatism” becomes “misunderstanding,” Beijing has already shaped the mental battlefield.
2. Institutional Staging. Language prepares the ground for policy. Once a narrative takes hold, legal instruments and administrative measures follow with reduced resistance.
3. Global Resonance Engineering. Through diplomatic channels, friendly think tanks, and media influence networks, Beijing exports its interpretive frame internationally. Over time, Taiwan risks being linguistically repositioned not as a democratic partner but as a “domestic question,” a clause in “one China” discourse.

In this framework, language becomes governance. Borders are redrawn not on maps but in minds. Beijing no longer needs to monopolize territory to assert control — it seeks to monopolize meaning.

For Taiwan, the frontline has already moved to the sphere of language. Sovereignty resides not only in law and security capabilities but also in the right to name reality. If narrative sovereignty collapses, institutional sovereignty soon follows.

V. Civilizational Rhetoric and AI-Era Discourse Power

Beijing’s narrative strategy is inseparable from its evolving claim to be a “civilizational-type state” (文明國家). Under Xi Jinping, discourse has become not only a tool but a core pillar of regime legitimacy. The Party now seeks to embed “Chinese-style modernization” as an alternative moral and governance paradigm to liberal democracy.

This ideological repositioning aims to achieve three objectives:

1. Civilizational Legitimacy – framing the CCP not as one government among many, but as the custodian of a civilizational order, beyond Western normative critique.
2. Hermeneutic Control – treating interpretation itself as a domain of sovereignty, where defining history and identity becomes a form of rule.
3. Technopolitical Amplification – deploying AI-driven media ecosystems, recommendation algorithms, and synthetic personas to operationalize narrative control domestically and abroad.

The “Zhong Taiwen” operation thus sits within a larger playbook: a fusion of civilizational nationalism, institutional confidence, and digital authoritarianism. In this model, language is not commentary — it is governance. The contest over Taiwan is not merely territorial but epistemic: a struggle over who defines modernity, legitimacy, and the future of the Chinese-speaking world.

As information ecosystems enter the AI age, narrative sovereignty becomes a national security frontier. For Taiwan and other democracies, defending truth is no longer just a matter of journalism or public diplomacy — it is a matter of strategic survival.

VI. Regional Implications and the Defense of Narratives

Beijing’s narrative offensive does not target Taiwan alone. It is part of a broader attempt to rewrite the strategic discourse of East Asia. China seeks to replace “sovereignty competition” with “collective development,” and to conceal institutional penetration beneath the rhetoric of “destiny community.”

In Southeast Asia, infrastructure financing and economic diplomacy are framed as “win-win cooperation” rather than geopolitical leverage.
Within the Indo-Pacific, “peaceful rise” narratives are used to offset U.S.-Japan-led democratic alignment.

For Japan and other regional democracies, the strategic danger is clear: if Beijing’s peace vocabulary becomes widely accepted, democratic security narratives risk marginalization.

Thus, Taiwan and Japan cannot confine cooperation to military interoperability or technology. They must extend it to narrative defense, with three concrete dimensions:

1. Institutional – Safeguarding rule-based multilateralism to prevent singular political language from dominating international settings.
2. Media and Knowledge Networks – Building cross-border journalism and think-tank partnerships to counter disinformation and discursive capture.
3. Cultural Storytelling – Promoting democratic modernity narratives rooted in Asian experience, countering the myth that only “Chinese-style modernity” fits the region.

China excels at advancing control behind the banner of peace. But democracies possess a unique counter-capability: diversity. Taiwan’s experience is a warning and a lesson — sovereignty can be challenged not by tanks, but by terms.

VII. Conclusion: Guarding Reality at the Boundary of Language

The emergence of “Zhong Taiwen” is not incidental. It signals a turning point in Beijing’s political method: a transition from power diplomacy to semantic governance. In this new paradigm, concepts displace coercion; discursive normalization precedes institutional absorption.

Yet linguistic victory is not equivalent to political victory. History teaches that regimes obsessed with language monopoly often do so out of legitimacy anxieties. Taiwan’s existence itself — pluralistic, democratic, and self-governing — disrupts the hegemonic narrative Beijing seeks to impose.

Defending democracy, therefore, is not merely a matter of counter-argument. It is the continuous act of speaking. As long as Taiwan articulates its own story, in its own words, the linguistic frontier remains open — and sovereignty remains alive.

Taiwan’s challenge is not only to endure military pressure but to assert voice at the boundary where language meets reality. When power attempts to script the future and rename the past, the only true resistance is to speak truth — again and again.

To defend a nation is to defend its vocabulary. To protect democracy is to protect its language. Taiwan must remain not simply the subject of others’ narratives, but the author of its own.