Music and mockery – the latest missiles in the Taiwan Strait propaganda war

Taiwanese defence ministry blasts PLA propaganda video, calling warplanes ‘disgusting vultures’
Derisive exchange follows latest mainland China military drills around the island

Taiwan

Lawrence Chungin Taipei

Published: 9:34pm, 11 Jan 2023

Why you can trust SCMP

Taiwan has branded the warplanes of the People’s Liberation Army “disgusting vultures” and its ballistic missiles “irritating firecrackers” in the latest round of an influence war with Beijing.

The dismissive descriptions came after the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command released a propaganda music video on Monday at the end of its large-scale combat exercises around the island the previous day.

Entitled “My Hawk Warriors Circling Formosa Island,” the video, posted on the command’s WeChat social media account, featured shots of PLA fighter jets and bombers along with scenic aerial views of Taiwan.

A screenshot from the PLA video entitled “My Hawk Warriors Circling Formosa Island,” featuring various PLA warplanes. Photo: Handout

In addition to glimpses of PLA troop movements and warships in live-fire drills, the video also shows what appears to be a PLA frigate surveilling the passage of a Taiwanese frigate in waters off the island’s northeast coast.

The video also features a singer expressing his “homesickness and my gentle call for you to come back”.

The video has been viewed close to 3 million times since it was posted on the Chinese Twitter-like platform Weibo with some internet users praising the PLA for doing a great job in paving the way for the island’s return to the motherland.

“If you don’t come back, [we] will break your legs,” one person wrote online, referring to Beijing’s long-standing cross-strait unification position that Taiwan must return to the mainland’s fold, by force if necessary.

In response, the island’s defence ministry on Tuesday posted messages on social media that called the Chinese warplanes “disgusting vultures flying everywhere” while the mainland’s missiles were “irritating firecrackers blasting aimlessly.”

01:43

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One of the messages offered to help the mainland with its latest spike in Covid-19 infections.

“Vitriolic rhetoric and military intimidation will never scare away freedom and democracy. Militaristic aggression is never the way a great power should act,” it said.

On social media, the Taiwanese defence ministry posted its reviews of a PLA propaganda video. Photo: Facebook

The latest volleys in the cross-strait propaganda war came after the mainland suddenly announced on Sunday night that its forces had organised “joint combat readiness patrols and actual combat drills in the sea and airspace around Taiwan, focused on land strikes and sea assaults”.

PLA spokesman Senior Colonel Shi Yi said in a written statement that the purpose of the drills was to counter “the provocative actions of external forces and Taiwan independence separatist forces”.

The PLA sent 57 planes and four warships close to Taiwan as a part of the joint drills, the Taiwanese defence ministry said, with more than 20 air sorties crossing the median line that separates the island and the mainland in the Taiwan Strait.

The ministry later condemned the PLA for being irrational, saying its provocation had “severely destabilised” the Taiwan Strait and the region. “We seek neither escalation nor conflict,” it said in a post on Twitter.

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This was the second time in less than a month that the PLA had organised high-intensity exercises near the island. On December 25, a record 71 warplanes and four ships were spotted operating around the island, according to the ministry.

Observers in Taiwan said the latest exercises were intended to help PLA forces strengthen their combat capabilities, and to serve as a warning to the island against allying with the US and other countries in countering Beijing.

In Beijing, Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesman for the mainland’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said on Wednesday that the PLA drills were a “grave warning to the provocation sparked by Taiwan and the US, which collude with each other militarily to sabotage cross-strait peace and stability.”

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In August, the PLA staged a series of unprecedented live-fire drills around the island in early August in retaliation for a visit to Taipei by then-US speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi – a trip Beijing saw as a violation of its sovereignty.

Most countries, including the United States, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state. Washington, however, opposes any attempt to take the island by force.