The next Taiwan crisis may begin in the digital public sphere

Commentators on strategic defense have outlined China’s strategy to deter or delay US intervention in a Taiwan contingency. Most deserving of serious attention is not Beijing’s advocacy of “strategic deterrence” per se but what that reveals about the narrowing space for diplomacy and the expanding appetite for risk in US-China security thinking.

Yes, rather than relying solely on a “bolt from the blue” missile strike, Beijing may turn to “strategic deterrence” – leveraging cyber, space, nuclear, and conventional tools to pressure the American homeland and sway the political decision-making calculus of a sitting US president.

China’s evolving toolkit to prevent or delay US military intervention in a Taiwan conflict is broader than missile salvos: It spans cyber disruption, satellite interference, economic coercion and calibrated nuclear signaling. But framing the center of gravity as the “American political will” risks misdiagnosing the real danger – not a president “balking,” but a president escalating in haste to avoid looking weak.

There’s a growing consensus in defense circles: The center of gravity in a Taiwan contingency may not lie on the battlefield but in the political will of the United States. Yet  much analysis betrays a troubling assumption – that conflict between the US and China is fast becoming a matter of when, not if, and that strategic signaling through threat escalation is the most effective means of managing it.

What’s missing from the analysis is the feedback loop between US and Chinese signaling, and how each side’s attempts at deterrence can rapidly spiral into misperception. A focus on “strategic deterrence” overlooks how information warfare, civilian targeting and economic sabotage could erode legitimacy and provoke disproportionate retaliation.

More fundamentally, these analyses assume a conflict logic that makes strategic war planning seem inevitable.

TikTok, WeChat and X warfare

But if  the center of gravity is truly political and strategic deterrence is now the currency of crisis management, we must confront a deeper reality: The next Taiwan crisis will not begin with missile launches or air defense alerts. It will begin in the digital public sphere – on platforms like TikTok, WeChat, and X—where information, misinformation, and political perception collide in real time.

Why aren’t we investing more in political deterrence – crisis communication channels, deconfliction protocols and norms of cyber/nuclear restraint?

From a policy perspective, the upcoming US National Defense Strategy must absolutely prepare for gray zone and strategic-level risks. But it must also signal that the US seeks stability, not dominance. Strategic ambiguity cannot mean strategic provocation.

Ultimately, both Washington and Beijing need to ask: What’s the political theory of victory in a Taiwan scenario that doesn’t end in catastrophic loss for all? If neither side can answer that, deterrence is no longer a tool of prudence – it’s a countdown clock.

As a researcher of China’s inter-network society and the global digital public sphere, I study how Chinese citizens and diaspora communities use technology both to navigate state power and to build grassroots advocacy networks.

This often unfolds through rights-based civic engagement, what I call Dao (倡道), which emerges even under authoritarian constraints. These digital expressions may seem peripheral to hard-power debates, but in reality, they constitute a non-kinetic front line in any strategic conflict.

Indeed, China has long recognized this. Its military doctrine emphasizes “informatized warfare,” in which narrative control, platform dominance and cyber disruption are as decisive as kinetic capabilities.

In a Taiwan scenario, Beijing would almost certainly begin by shaping the information space – disrupting communications, hijacking social media narratives and using influence operations to sow confusion across Taiwanese society, US domestic politics and the broader global public.

This is not speculation – it’s precedent. During the early Covid-19 outbreak, WeChat and TikTok became dual-use tools: conduits for real-time grassroots reporting and civic organization in China, but also vehicles for censorship, disinformation and state-guided messaging.

In the US, TikTok has emerged as both a creative outlet and a national security flashpoint. Its content moderation policies and opaque algorithms have triggered bipartisan concern, culminating in legislation threatening to ban the app altogether.

The power of digital narrative is visible in the rise of viral online consensus, often mistaken for spontaneous public sentiment.

During the 2022 Taiwan Strait tensions following then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit, nationalist sentiment surged on Weibo and WeChat, where hashtags like “统一台湾是历史必然” (“Unification with Taiwan is historically inevitable”) dominated discussion. Millions of shares and state-amplified comments created a feedback loop that pressured Chinese officials to escalate their posture while sidelining dissenting voices. 

In any Taiwan crisis, diaspora communities would be among the first to feel the pressure. They would become both targets and transmitters of contested narratives: accused of dual loyalty, pulled into surveillance dragnets or misrepresented in media coverage.

This is already happening. Chinese American researchers, journalists, and public servants have been wrongfully investigated or publicly vilified in the name of national security. The result is a chilling effect on civic engagement and a fraying of the very democratic norms the US claims to defend.  

Elsewhere in the world, during the early months of Russia’s war in Ukraine, TikTok and X were flooded with first-person videos, maps, memes and emotional appeals. These helped form a pro-Ukraine online consensus that shaped public support and policy responses in the US and Europe. Yet such consensus can also be manipulated or distorted, as seen with viral conspiracy theories about biolabs or false flag operations.

In the event of a Taiwan contingency, we can expect similar digital battlegrounds. Pro-China influencers may flood platforms with claims of provocations by Taipei or Washington, while nationalist US accounts amplify calls for swift military response. Diaspora voices – especially those of Taiwanese, Chinese and Asian American communities – will be caught in the crossfire: accused of dual loyalty, targeted with misinformation, or silenced out of fear.