China is conducting an expanding campaign of influence operations across the Indo-Pacific, and the latest case emerged in Japan, where the campaign for the House of Representatives election in February 2026 was accompanied by a coordinated wave of disinformation on X. Posts on the platform systematically spread memes pushing two dominant narratives: “Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae is a militarist” and “Japan cannot win in a Taiwan contingency.” Although the accounts had Japanese names and wrote in Japanese, the text contained traces of simplified Chinese phrasing. Some of the meme images closely resembled graphics used in Chinese government-affiliated media. More importantly, the themes matched Chinese official talking points, especially Beijing’s warning that Japan should not “meddle” in Taiwan affairs and its attempt to depict Japanese leaders who advocate stronger defense as irresponsible militarists. These elements led investigators and analysts to conclude that the activity was a coordinated Chinese operation rather than spontaneous domestic discourse. The operation appeared designed to undermine public trust in Japan’s political leadership, dampen support for a more robust defense posture, and prepare Japanese public opinion to accept the idea that a conflict over Taiwan would be unwinnable. The targeting of Takaichi Sanae, a conservative politician associated with a firm line on national security, was no accident. The same campaign sought to portray Japan as a country with no viable alternative to accommodating China. This episode is not an isolated case. It is part of a pattern of Chinese digital interference that has been building across the Indo-Pacific for years. The Japanese case is especially significant because Japan is one of the United States’ closest allies in the region and a country whose language and internet ecosystem were previously believed to be relatively difficult for foreign operations to penetrate. The sophistication of the operation, including its ability to adapt Chinese narratives to the Japanese political context, suggests that Beijing now possesses both the intent and the technical capability to conduct influence operations in a wide range of national settings. For Japanese voters and for democratic governments throughout the region, the episode is a warning that no election can be assumed immune.
Russian influence operations targeting elections have been documented in Western democracies since around 2015. In the Indo-Pacific, Chinese operations targeting elections have been observed with increasing frequency since the 2020s, with some of the earliest and most sustained efforts occurring in Taiwan. During Taiwan’s 2018 and 2022 local elections, disinformation attributed to Chinese sources was disseminated across social media platforms, often designed to amplify divisions around candidates and issues. In the 2024 presidential election, the focus shifted to disinformation targeting members of the Democratic Progressive Party who were distancing themselves from China. The goal was to paint them as radical separatists, undermine their credibility, and boost perceptions that the opposition would deliver more stable relations with Beijing. In the United States, Chinese influence operations have also been a subject of intense political debate. On July 16, 2026, President Donald Trump cited Chinese influence operations targeting the 2020 presidential election at a press conference, and U.S. intelligence documents released the same day concluded that China had indeed conducted influence operations ahead of that election. The documents reportedly found that Beijing sought to damage public opinion of the Trump administration and undermine Washington’s international reputation. This was not merely an attempt to influence the outcome in favor of a particular candidate; it was a broader effort to erode faith in American democracy and reduce the United States’ standing in the world. Australia has experienced similar interference for an even longer period. China has been conducting influence operations in Australian politics since the mid-2010s, focusing on politicians who criticized Chinese policies, on the Australian security establishment, and on public debates over technology and foreign investment. In the 2025 general election, those operations extended into digital spaces, with disinformation designed to affect electoral outcomes and shape the political environment. Taken together, these experiences demonstrate that Chinese influence operations are not a single tactic but an evolving toolkit, applied differently depending on the target country. In Taiwan, the emphasis is on delegitimizing pro-independence politicians; in the United States, on undermining trust in leadership; in Australia, on punishing critics and shaping policy debates. The common thread is a strategic desire to reduce resistance to China’s regional ambitions.
More recently, Chinese influence operations have spread to new targets. The Philippines, which is at odds with China over territorial disputes in the South China Sea, has emerged as a major battlefield. Security authorities in Manila reported that China-supported groups conducted influence operations during the 2025 midterm and local elections. These operations reportedly amplified anti-American themes, played down Chinese actions in contested waters, and sought to discredit Filipino officials and candidates perceived as hostile to Beijing. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered a detailed investigation, underscoring the seriousness with which his government viewed the threat. There is growing concern that China may intensify these efforts ahead of the 2028 presidential election, when Beijing could seek to secure the victory of a pro-China candidate in order to shift Philippine policy away from the existing security alignment with Washington. Such an outcome would have far-reaching consequences for the balance of power in the region. Chinese influence operations have also become increasingly prominent across South Pacific island countries. During the Solomon Islands’ 2024 general election, disinformation circulated claiming that the United States was interfering in the vote. Since around 2023, allegations that Washington wants to assassinate the pro-China prime minister have been spread repeatedly, in what appears to be a sustained campaign to foment anti-American sentiment. The choice of themes is strategic: rather than promoting Chinese policies directly, the operations try to turn local populations against the United States and its democratic allies. In small states with limited institutional capacity and modest media ecosystems, even a relatively small number of viral falsehoods can have a disproportionate impact. These examples show that China is not confining its influence operations to major powers. The Pacific islands, Southeast Asian nations, and other smaller jurisdictions are being tested as well. From Manila to Honiara, democratic governments are being forced to confront a threat that is often invisible and difficult to prove. The use of local languages, local cultural references, and local political grievances makes the operations especially effective.
Until recently, the digital spaces used by speakers of smaller languages were relatively protected by language barriers. It was difficult for non-native speakers to post convincingly on social media in Japanese, Tagalog, or a South Pacific language without leaving obvious linguistic traces. That protection is now collapsing. Recent advances in generative AI have dismantled the barriers that once made foreign influence operations expensive and risky to execute. AI tools can produce natural-sounding text in almost any language, mimic the style of individual users, generate realistic images and video, and even clone voices. The result is that a political operative in Beijing can create a convincing Japanese-language post or a believable Tagalog video without any genuine proficiency in the language. The implications are enormous. Previously, social media posting and sharing required manual effort, and the need to recruit human operators limited the scale of influence operations. Now, AI-driven bot accounts can amplify narratives at scale, flood comment sections, share memes across platforms, and create the appearance of genuine grassroots support or opposition — all without human involvement. An operation that once required hundreds of people can now be conducted by a small team with access to the right tools. This means the threat of foreign influence operations is rising not only in the Indo-Pacific but across all digital spaces that operate in languages beyond the major ones like English and French. Even smaller linguistic communities are no longer safe. The same technology that enables genuine communication and creativity also enables coordinated disinformation. The rise of generative AI has democratized the capacity to deceive. For governments, this creates a serious new vulnerability: they cannot assume that a post written in their own language was written by one of their own citizens. The Indo-Pacific, with its many languages and relatively small social media ecosystems, is especially exposed. The challenge is not just to identify individual malicious posts but to understand how AI-generated content interacts with human biases, political polarization, and existing social conflicts. The old rule that code-switching and cultural fluency provided a natural defense no longer holds.
Countering foreign influence operations in digital spaces has become a critical task for any government seeking to protect its democracy. Basic measures — monitoring the state of one’s own digital linguistic environment, building fact-checking systems, and improving media literacy — are necessary but not sufficient. These measures can help citizens recognize falsehoods and help platforms remove harmful content, but they cannot stop a determined state actor from launching new operations. Freezing the accounts used by attackers generally requires cooperation from American social media platforms. Most of the world’s major platforms are headquartered in the United States and are governed by U.S. law. Yet American Big Tech, whose revenues can exceed the GDP of smaller countries, tends to ignore requests from those countries. When the government of the Philippines asks a platform to remove a network of Chinese-controlled accounts, that request competes with countless others from law enforcement and regulators around the world. A platform may be reluctant to act because the legal standards for defining foreign interference are unclear, because the evidence is incomplete, or because the political risk of taking sides is too high. As a result, foreign influence operations can continue even after they have been identified by targeted governments. The asymmetry of power between anglophone tech giants and the countries they serve is one of the defining features of the current information environment. Smaller states simply do not have the leverage to force compliance. They cannot fine a company larger than their entire economy, and they cannot credibly threaten to shut down an essential communications infrastructure on which their own citizens depend. This is why governments targeted by influence operations must coordinate with one another. By sharing evidence, amplifying one another’s voices, and building the international public opinion needed to press Big Tech into action, they can create political pressure that no single country can generate alone. Joint public attribution can raise the costs for companies that remain passive. Diplomatic pressure, coordinated by groups of nations, can make the issue impossible for corporate leaders and shareholders to ignore. In the age of generative AI, that cooperation is no longer optional; it is as essential as the defense of physical borders.
The expansion of Chinese influence operations across the Indo-Pacific is thus a defining challenge for democratic governance in the coming decade. The evidence from Japan, Taiwan, the United States, Australia, the Philippines, and the Solomon Islands shows that Beijing is willing and able to interfere in elections and political debates across a vast and diverse region. The tools are evolving quickly. Generative AI has removed the old protections of language and scale, and social media platforms are unable or unwilling to police their own ecosystems adequately. The basic democratic defenses — an informed citizenry, independent journalism, transparent elections, and strong institutions — remain essential, but they are no longer enough on their own. Governments must treat influence operations as a national security threat and invest accordingly. They must also recognize that the challenge is transnational. No single country, no matter how large or wealthy, can defend its digital public square alone. The platforms are global, the attackers are state-backed, and the techniques are constantly adapting. The most effective response will therefore be international: coalitions of democracies sharing information, issuing joint attribution, pressing technology companies for real accountability, and supporting civil society groups that work to expose and discredit foreign manipulation. The stakes are enormous. In the Indo-Pacific, the outcome of elections can determine the future of alliances, the rules of maritime order, and the status of Taiwan. If citizens cannot trust what they see online, then democratic choices lose their meaning. The assessment’s conclusion is stark: in the age of generative AI, cooperation among those who believe in free and fair democracy is no longer optional. It is the only way to ensure that the digital spaces where so much of public life now occurs remain spaces where truth has a chance. The window for action is still open, but it is closing. The governments of the Indo-Pacific and their partners must move now, before the next election becomes the target.
