In many counties and cities in Taiwan, Chinese spouses have been seen live-streaming children around elementary schools. A Taipei City councilor received a report from a parent, and the Taipei City Police Department tracked down a woman surnamed Liu. On the 26th, they announced that they would transfer the case to the Taipei District Prosecutors Office for investigation under the Criminal Code for the crime of violating secrets, and would send the case to the Social Affairs Bureau for adjudication for violating the Child and Juvenile Law. This is the first case in which a Chinese spouse was brought to justice for live-streaming schoolchildren.
The 52-year-old Chinese spouse surnamed Liu filmed the children's faces directly, sparking outrage among parents. When stopped, she retorted, "You're meddling too much." Police reviewed surveillance footage and confirmed a woman was filming with a selfie stick, promising to increase patrols around the school.
Taiwan's TVBS reported that a parent of a student expressed concern: "There's been news about organ trafficking and baby kidney trafficking in China, so when I saw this news, I immediately connected the two things and felt like I was targeting a particular child."
In Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, a Chinese woman was seen walking back and forth in front of an elementary school with a selfie stick, filming children and livestreaming them, causing panic among parents. The woman claimed she was simply livestreaming to sell products and share her life. Such incidents have sparked concerns in Taiwanese society about potential motives and potential security vulnerabilities.
Douyin and Xiaohongshu are flooded with videos of Taiwanese schoolchildren filmed in Chinese dubbing, labeled "Taiwanese elementary school students."
RFA reporters searched for "Taiwanese elementary school students" on the Chinese social media platforms Douyin and Xiaohongshu and found numerous short videos depicting daily life for Taiwanese elementary school students. Some videos even went inside the schoolyard to film students eating their nutritious lunches, wearing Hanfu and performing traditional Chinese dances, playing soccer, and playing the harmonica. The school's name and motto, "Li, Yi, Lian, and Chi," were also included. One livestreamer, broadcast on a Chinese-language platform, said, "Teachers in Taiwanese elementary schools are not allowed to accept gifts during the Lunar New Year holidays. There's no tuition or meal fees, only a small amount for textbooks, so parents don't feel any pressure."
The filming locations for the Chinese dubbing videos were spread across Taiwan, including Keelung, Taipei, Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, and even the outlying island of Kinmen. Many of these videos feature background music like "Childhood," composed by Taiwanese singer Luo Dayou and performed by Sylvia Chang, and Jiang Hui's Taiwanese song "Farewell Coast."
The video contains "United Front" language and alienates relations between Taiwan and Japan.
The video features "Taiwanese elementary school students" and "motherland"—unified front language. A video titled "Taiwanese child corrects classmate's mistake about traveling to two countries" features a conversation between a mother and daughter. The daughter says, "Some kids said they were going abroad to play, to Shenzhen and Hong Kong." The mother asks, "Was it fun?" The daughter replies, "Mommy, that's not the point. The point is that they were 'going abroad' to play. I told him that's not 'going abroad.' Taiwan, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong are all Chinese territories. I tell my friends that we are all Taiwanese, Chinese." The video ends with the words "Taiwan independence is a dead end, unification is unstoppable."
In one video, a kindergarten child tells her mother, "The teacher said mainland China isn't friendly to Taiwan," "They don't let us do what we want to do," and "Japan is the only country friendly to Taiwan." The Chinese-speaking teacher asks, "What do you think?" The child nods in agreement. The teacher immediately corrects her, saying, "Although we live in Taiwan, we are Chinese. Taiwan is a province on Chinese territory. We Chinese are not friendly to Japan at all. The Japanese killed many of us Chinese. What the teacher says isn't necessarily true."
Another video shows the daughter of the Chinese counterpart running out of the schoolyard and screaming to her mother, "Do you know how popular 'Nezha II' is? A lot of my classmates know about this movie. They were so envious after seeing me and wanted their parents to take them to mainland China to see it!"
The themes of these videos shot by the Chinese dubbing service include introducing the start and end times of school for different grades of Taiwanese elementary school students: "The school bell has rung. Children from each class, please pack your bags and line up in the corridor. Teachers, please quickly take your positions." "Wednesday is a half-day school day. Wear casual clothes. After class, you will either go home or go to daycare, talent classes, or tutoring." "What time do children in our country get out of school?" Another Chinese dubbing service, live-streaming a primary school in Tainan, asked, "Are the walls of all Taiwanese elementary schools this low?"
In another video titled "Lunch for Elementary School Students in Taiwan," a Chinese spouse introduced the equipment students need to go to school, such as school bags, lunch bags, and empty lunch boxes. The school provides nutritious lunches at noon, costing about NT$58 per person, equivalent to RMB 13.
In a video titled "What are the differences between education on both sides of the Taiwan Strait?", the livestreamer compared the differences between Fuzhou and Kinmen. He mentioned how math exams lacked pinyin, and how his youngest son struggled with transitioning between the two regions. He transferred to another school midway and couldn't keep up, forcing him to repeat a grade. The Mandarin textbooks, however, were all in traditional Chinese characters and lacked much classical poetry. The books "actually flip from right to left," and the text was arranged vertically. The person in the video captioned, "It looks a bit like an ancient book. I didn't expect Taiwan to pass down our ancestral traditions."
Taiwanese Internet celebrities: using their medium-sized partners to gain traffic and make extra money
"Photographer's Diary - Ba Jiong," a Taiwanese website that has long exposed China's united front tactics, told Radio Free Asia in an interview on the 27th that these Chinese-language content providers likely saw a surge in traffic for these videos, perhaps because rural Chinese people also enjoy watching them and posting them on platforms like TikTok and Kuaishou. Furthermore, the devaluation of Taiwan as a province of China and the use of united front tactics also attract viewership from "Little Pinks," who are eager to become "patriotic fans."
Ba Jiong believes that this has little to do with national security or infiltration. "What does filming children have to do with infiltration? Satellites can be used to film. Simply hacking into Taiwan's intersection surveillance systems would reveal street views around these elementary schools. Street view data can also be retrieved on Google. Children's information can be hacked from the household registration system. Using Chinese satellites to film schools for infiltration is a poor method."
Ba Jiong believes that even in Western democratic countries such as the United States, filming children is not allowed. It is reasonable for the Taiwanese police to handle this case in accordance with child and youth laws. This matter is related to protecting children's portrait rights.
Chinese dissident Gong Yujian, who is stranded in Taiwan, also said in an interview with Radio Free Asia that some TikTok and Xiaohongshu apps in mainland China circulate authentic videos of Taiwanese customs, food, and elementary school students, which attract a lot of traffic and attention, and attract mainland spouses to use the traffic to make money by sharing advertising fees.
Chinese dissident: China's wolf warrior diplomacy toward Taiwan has triggered a spiral of escalating hostility across the Taiwan Strait
Gong Yujian mentioned that this had happened as early as more than ten years ago during the Ma Ying-jeou administration. At that time, the two sides of the Taiwan Strait were like one family and had warm relations. These behaviors would not arouse resentment from the Taiwanese government and people. However, in recent years, the hostility between the two sides has spiraled, and with the outbreak of the anti-extradition movement in Hong Kong, the "one country, two systems" policy has been destroyed. Ultimately, it is due to the wolf warrior diplomacy of the Xi Jinping regime, which is full of verbal attacks and military intimidation, military exercises, and threats of "bloodbath in Taiwan" and "leaving the island but not the people." The awareness of resisting China and protecting Taiwan has increased in Taiwanese society, causing these actions of the Chinese dubbing actors with mainland accents filming children to cause panic among the Taiwanese people.
Gong Yujian said: "Because there are indeed rumors in China that many children have disappeared inexplicably and had their organs harvested, becoming victims of human trafficking and organ trafficking. This is very terrifying, so Taiwanese people project their fears onto the fact that Chinese couples took photos of children. Taiwanese society is a little anxious, and it is understandable to improve national security and protect children. The Taiwanese government has legal basis to use relevant laws to punish mainland spouses. It is not restricting the freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of creation of these mainland spouses. It calls on mainland spouses to be cautious in their words and deeds amid the tension in cross-strait relations, not to cause misunderstandings among Taiwanese people, and to try their best to take care of their lives in Taiwan, which is the better choice.
Taiwanese national security scholar: The CCP often uses human wave tactics to collect intelligence, and Taiwan should be on guard
Shen Mingshi, a researcher at Taiwan's Institute for National Defense and Security Research, pointed out in an interview with Radio Free Asia on the 27th that three Chinese-speaking internet celebrities who had previously advocated for military reunification have been repatriated to China. Therefore, we cannot just look at the superficial traffic and think that it is unimportant to national security issues. The united front effect of the video has the effect of consolidating Chinese consciousness and deliberately highlighting the desire of some Taiwanese people for reunification and the pro-China ideology for propaganda.
Shen Mingshi said, "From an intelligence perspective, the CCP often uses human wave tactics to gather intelligence, not just from military, social, political, and economic perspectives, but also for information integration. Filming and collecting data from elementary schools could provide crucial intelligence for assessing Taiwan's social development and educational situation. For example, the issue of organ harvesting might not be known to the people filming it, but if these images and information are disseminated, there's no ruling out the possibility that someone might target Taiwan. Relevant authorities should consider this."
Shen Mingshi also stated that Taiwan's education, judicial, and police departments bringing Chinese-language videotapes to justice could have a deterrent effect. Regarding national security, the large number of Chinese-language videotapes filming Taiwanese schools, including their locations and geography, could potentially exploit them as part of a combat plan should China launch military action. For example, Japan's NHK ran a special report on how the terrain of Taiwan's Presidential Palace was used by the Chinese People's Liberation Army in simulated combat plans in Inner Mongolia. These Chinese-language videos could be pieced together and integrated to provide valuable intelligence on a possible Chinese military invasion of Taiwan, potentially impacting national security. Furthermore, the CCP could potentially reward these individuals with "missions" and incentivize them to film more similar footage.
Shen Mingshi believes that local police units should not only use juvenile justice, but also include national security, confidentiality and anti-espionage in police administration. They should pay attention to the behavior of these people, keep track of their whereabouts and what they photographed. Perhaps this will help solve a large number of espionage cases.
