A simple Douyin video became a powerful tool in China’s digital propaganda against Taiwan.
NEW DELHI: On May 17, 2025, a littleknown Chinese Douyin user with just 83 followers, Cheng Yi—who goes by the handle “Shandong Kaige”— posted a video of himself landing on a beach in Taiwan, planting the Chinese national flag, and declaring symbolic victory. What appeared to be a personal stunt rapidly transformed into a multi-layered digital influence operation—engineered, amplified, and aligned with Beijing’s geopolitical messaging. Douyin, China’s domestic version of TikTok, is a shortvideo platform developed by ByteDance.
Though it shares a similar interface with TikTok, Douyin is a separate, China-only application operating under China’s censorship regime. Its closed ecosystem, embedded with surveillance controls and state content filtering, has increasingly become a tool for amplifying strategic narratives and symbolic provocations. According to an exclusive investigation by Cyabra—a Tel Aviv-based AI-powered platform that monitors influence operations and fake accounts online—findings shared exclusively with The Sunday Guardian show that the video evolved from an obscure upload into a crossplatform propaganda event in under 48 hours.
Cyabra’s forensic mapping documents the viral arc of the incident: from initial post to grassroots amplification to institutional narrative reinforcement. Cheng Yi, identifying himself as “Shandong Kaige,” uploaded the video to Douyin showing himself landing on a beach in Taiwan via rubber boat, planting a Chinese flag, and declaring symbolic victory. The next day, the video spread rapidly across Chinese platforms like Weibo, then began surfacing on international platforms including Facebook and X, where nationalist and diaspora communities shared it widely. By May 19, Chinese stateaffiliated media and prominent nationalist influencers had rebranded the clip into a patriotic narrative, transforming grassroots virality into top-down messaging.
According to Taiwan’s TTV News, Cheng Yi claimed in his video that he had been “instructed in a dream by the Jade Emperor and Mazu”—a revered sea goddess in Chinese folk religion—to undertake the voyage. The Taiwanese Coast Guard Administration later confirmed the video was genuine and that the location shown was indeed Dayuan District in Taoyuan. The man behind the video is from Dongsun Family Village in Shouguang City, Shandong Province. His Douyin profile described him as a fishing enthusiast from a greenhouse-farming family. Prior to this incident, his account had just 83 followers, 1,878 total likes, and no record of political content. He claims—though unverified—to have studied at Beijing University.
These details raise questions about how such a low-profile account triggered a narrative storm. One of the most impactful posts came from a Facebook user named 周軒 (@vic2211), who shared the video on May 18 with commentary framing it as a demonstration of Taiwan’s coastal vulnerabilities and military unpreparedness. The post received over 8,200 likes, 2,200 shares, and nearly 100 comments, acting as a viral launchpad beyond Chinese-language platforms. Hours later, at 3:20 am on May 19, the verified Facebook page of China Times, a Taiwanese outlet with a Beijing-leaning editorial slant, published a newsstyle summary of the event. The tone was strikingly matter of fact and patriotic, reporting the flag-planting as a notable occurrence rather than a provocation. The post gathered 1.9K likes, 623 comments, and an estimated 73,000 views, further legitimising the stunt in the eyes of online audiences.
Perhaps most revealing is Cyabra’s identification of “ 台灣讚警” (Taiwan Praises Police), a likely fake profile geolocated in Taipei, which posted multiple times about the incident on May 18. The profile specifically targeted Facebook communities such as “警察之友會” (Friends of the Police Association)— a public group with over 60,000 members—primarily used for law enforcementrelated news and opinion. By embedding itself in such a group, the fake account leveraged pre-existing local trust structures to mask foreign manipulation. This tactic, which Cyabra refers to as “semi-organic propaganda,” is increasingly used to inject statealigned narratives into what appear to be authentic community discussions. “This is how digital influence works now: fast, strategic, and engineered to sway public perception before anyone even realises they’re being targeted,” Dan Brahmy, CEO of Cyabra, told The Sunday Guardian. “What started as a loweffort video from a random user was reframed into a weaponised message, amplified by fake profiles, political influencers, and coordinated networks, then pushed into a viral, cross-platform campaign,” he said.
The viral success of the “Shandong Kaige” video highlights how modern propaganda often begins not in government offices, but on personal smartphones. The digital damage to the Taiwanese government from this incident may already be done—not on the beach itself, but in the minds and timelines of millions. Though executed by a little-known vlogger with no political history, the Shandong Kaige stunt delivered outsized strategic results. It cast doubt on Taiwan’s coastal security, served as a symbolic assertion of Chinese sovereignty, and showcased how viral content can be swiftly weaponised into a coordinated propaganda campaign.
By penetrating trusted online communities and reframing the act through fake profiles and aligned media, it operated as a low-cost, high-impact exercise in digital influence warfare. Crucially, this was a zerocost operation for China that achieved global visibility without risking any military assets. The message reached tens of thousands across platforms—not through firepower, but through algorithmic spectacle. As per Cyabra, in an age of asymmetrical conflict, the episode reaffirmed a key lesson of modern statecraft: sometimes, a smartphone and a flag can project more strategic power than a missile or a warship.
