In recent years, the Taiwanese government has worked actively to consolidate cultural resources, using public funding and platforms such as the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) to connect creators with investors and expand opportunities for international collaboration. With a free and open creative environment, Taiwan has gradually grown into a major audiovisual production hub in Asia. The 2024 Golden Horse Awards (金馬獎) saw a record number of foreign nominees, with Thai actor Wanlop Rungkumjad becoming the first Thai nominee for Best Actor. In 2025, Vietnamese actor Liên Bỉnh Phát won Best Actor at the Golden Bell Awards (金鐘獎), marking the first time a Vietnamese performer received the honour.
Yet even in such freedom, works dealing with political subjects or Taiwan’s own history still deter many filmmakers. Concerns that touching on sensitive themes may hinder entry into the Chinese market create immense pressure for directors, screenwriters, actors, and production teams alike, making such projects high-risk undertakings. It is for this reason that A Foggy Tale (大濛)—written and directed by Yu-Hsun Chen (陳玉勳) —has drawn particular attention. The film centres on everyday life and the social atmosphere experienced by ordinary Taiwanese people between 1951 and the 1960s. Its Taiwanese title, Tà-bông (“Fog”), uses mist as a metaphor for the suffocating unease that permeated society from the post-war period into the White Terror (1949–1991).
A Foggy Tale ultimately swept the 2025 Golden Horse Awards, winning Best Feature Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best Art Direction, and Best Make-up & Costume Design. It became the year’s biggest winner and marked a significant milestone for Taiwanese cinema in its treatment of historical themes.
Taiwanese Cinema Between Truth and Reconciliation
In contemporary Taiwan, speaking about the 228 Massacre, the White Terror, or martial law is no longer taboo. Yet before full democratisation in the 1990s, these topics were precisely the parts of history the ruling authorities sought to suppress. Even after Taiwan built a mature democratic and liberal system in the 2000s, debates on such issues persisted due to partisan divides and competing historical interpretations.
In 1989, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A City of Sadness (悲情城市) became the first major film to depict the 228 Massacre, reflecting the shadow of the White Terror through the fate of a single family. In 2019, Detention (返校), adapted from Red Candle Games’ 2017 PC game, portrayed students and teachers persecuted for participating in a reading group. In 2022, Untold Herstory (流麻溝十五號) adapted historical accounts to depict the real experiences of female political prisoners subjected to “thought reform” (思想改造) on Green Island in the 1950s. These works were at times more or less criticised for “inciting social division” or serving “specific political agendas”.
In contrast, A Foggy Tale—despite addressing equally heavy history—was praised for its gentle way of telling the story, winning the Golden Horse Audience Choice Award (金馬獎觀眾票選最佳影片). Director Yu-Hsun Chen explains that the film’s central concern is the fate of “political victims” (政治受難者), while also expanding its lens to ordinary people and the broader ambience of the era. “I feel heartbroken for these people… They were sacrificed and discarded, leaving nothing behind. Someone has to preserve a trace of their memory,” he said. Chen also paid tribute to mainlander veterans (外省老兵) who fled with the Nationalist Army: “They were conscripted, spent their lives on battlefields from the anti-Japanese war to the Civil War and then Taiwan, and were ultimately abandoned by the government. They deserve justice too.”
Unlike earlier works that navigated the sensitive ethnic narratives between mainlanders (外省人) and native Taiwanese (本省人), A Foggy Tale avoids casting any group as perpetrators or victims. Instead, it invites audiences to revisit the 1950s from 2025 and consider how people from various backgrounds confronted oppression and helplessness. While inspired by history, its characters are archetypes—political prisoners, family members, mainlander soldiers, civil servants of both ethnic backgrounds, and ordinary citizens.
Two parables of water droplets serve as metaphors for those forgotten in the White Terror: some droplets become clouds that nourish the earth; others dissolve into fog, vanishing with the morning sun. These small existences nonetheless shaped the landscape we live in. The film reminds us that remembering such histories—and the lives within them—is never easy, especially as Taiwan now faces one of the world’s most severe forms of cognitive warfare, in which disinformation exploits the soil of free speech to sow confusion, foment internal division, and undermine global support for democratic Taiwan.
Taiwan on the Front Lines of Disinformation: Beijing’s Weaponisation of International Law
According to the 2024 V-Dem report, Taiwan has been the country most affected by foreign disinformation for 11 consecutive years, with China increasingly expanding such operations and even turning Hong Kong into a base for dissemination. In November 2025, “Taiwan’s international status” once again drew global attention.
The controversy began when Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi (高市早苗), responding to questions in the Diet, outlined the conditions under which a crisis in Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” (存立事態危機) enabling Japan to exercise collective self-defence. China escalated this into a diplomatic dispute, announcing sanctions to pressure Japan into accepting Beijing’s territorial claims over Taiwan. On 26 November, Takaichi cited the Treaty of San Francisco, noting that “Japan is in no position” to determine Taiwan’s status. The next day, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected the treaty’s legal validity, asserting that Taiwan had already been part of China since 1945 and that the People’s Republic of China, founded in 1949, naturally possessed sovereignty over Taiwan.
Crucially, China’s actions targeted not only Japan but the U.S.–Japan alliance through cognitive warfare. In September 2025, the American Institute in Taiwan stated that China was wilfully distorting the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Proclamation, and the San Francisco Peace Treaty—none of which determined Taiwan’s final status. Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterated that the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are mutually non-subordinate, and that Beijing has no authority to represent Taiwan.
If A Foggy Tale uses nuanced storytelling to help audiences confront the legacy of authoritarian rule, China’s denial of the San Francisco Peace Treaty forces Taiwanese society to re-examine post-war international law and the relationship between the ROC and PRC.
Beijing’s posture is not simply a response to Takaichi’s remarks; it is a challenge aimed at the U.S.–Japan alliance. The reason is clear: Japan and the United States are the chief obstacles to Beijing’s expansion in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. By discrediting the San Francisco system, China seeks to undermine the post-war international order.
US Taiwan Watch notes that the treaty, led by the United States, never assigned Taiwan’s sovereignty to any state. In 1952, Japan renounced Taiwan and Penghu without designating a recipient. This “undetermined status” offered the ROC a legal loophole while preserving room for self-determination by the people of Taiwan. Since then, the United States has maintained strategic ambiguity, refraining from taking a legal stance on Taiwan’s sovereignty. In effect, the ROC exercised territorial authority over Taiwan after 1949, but Taiwanese people only gained genuine self-determination through democratisation in the 1990s.
China’s reaction, therefore, underscores a key truth: international law does not support Beijing’s claim of an “inevitable” sovereignty over Taiwan. As history and current geopolitics intertwine, Taiwan must recall not only the fog of the White Terror but also recognise the shifting currents of the international order. Memory and legal clarity form the first line of defence against cognitive warfare.
“Peace”: A Concept Beijing Seeks to Distort Through Cognitive Warfare
Amid intensifying Chinese pressure and cognitive warfare, the Lai Ching-te administration must articulate more clearly and firmly a simple fact: the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are mutually non-subordinate. This is not mere diplomatic phrasing, nor election rhetoric, but a cornerstone of national security. Taiwan must also begin a democratic conversation on normalising the state, enabling society to reach consensus grounded in fact and reason.
First, the government must end the ambiguous claim that “the ROC and PRC both represent China”, which only weakens Taiwan’s international standing. Secondly, strengthening democratic resilience is essential—through transitional justice and historical education—so citizens understand how Taiwan achieved its freedoms and prosperity, and that democracy is a hard-won achievement.
Worryingly, Chinese cognitive warfare has seeped into daily life. In July 2025, a street interview that went viral, one respondent said he “only hoped Taiwan’s national health insurance (健保) would not collapse after China takes over”, admitted he knew little about the failure of “One Country, Two Systems” (一國兩制) in Hong Kong, yet believed “China’s takeover could not possibly cause unrest”. He even blamed Taiwan’s “Great Recall” movement for social disorder. Such misconceptions reveal a dangerous conflation between “peace under annexation” and “peace under democracy”, obscuring the value of freedom and the fragility of democratic institutions.
President Lai’s “Ten Lectures on National Unity” hoped to foster societal consensus, but its tone drifted towards electoral mobilisation, prompting opposition parties to accuse it of suppressing dissent. In an interview with Deutsche Welle, chairperson of Chinese Nationalist Party Cheng Li-wen (鄭麗文) reaffirmed the “One China under the Constitution” doctrine, advocating that Taiwan and Beijing “jointly return to a democratic China”, and criticising the government’s defence policies as provoking war. The Chinese Nationalist Party leadership appears to believe that merely echoing Beijing’s stance that “Taiwan is part of China” can secure peace without strengthening defence or raising the cost of Chinese aggression. Such rhetoric sounds moderate but in effect places national security at the mercy of Beijing’s goodwill.
Claims that the “ROC represents China” (中華民國代表全中國) or that Taiwan was “returned” to China after the war originate from authoritarian narratives—alongside notions such as “Taiwanese culture is inferior” or “postponing elections is necessary to prepare for retaking the mainland”. These narratives never underwent democratic scrutiny. Today, Taiwan is paying the price: the Chinese Nationalist Party has proposed allowing Chinese spouses to run for office without renouncing PRC nationality; the civil defence manual (台灣全民安全指引) clarifies that “messages about defeat or surrender during invasion are likely disinformation”, yet the Chinese Nationalist Party politicians mock this and even accuse the government of irresponsibility for refusing to consider surrender.
In cognitive warfare, remembering one’s own story is the strongest form of defence. A Foggy Tale reminds us of the forgotten period of Taiwan we know today. Freedom comes at a price, and peace requires self-defence. Now is the moment to clarify the confusion between the ROC and PRC and to allow Taiwanese society—grounded in evidence and democratic reasoning—to chart its future.
Opponents often characterise any strengthening of Taiwan’s defence as “provoking Beijing”, arguing that declaring Taiwan part of China is sufficient for peace. Former president Ma Ying-jeou insists that under his watch, the Taiwan Strait enjoyed unprecedented stability with a defence budget one-fifth of today’s, and that Taiwan is now in a “quasi-war” due to President Lai’s misjudgement. Yet under Chinese united-front pressure and cognitive warfare, only by remembering its history and understanding the cost of freedom and peace can Taiwan work pragmatically with democratic partners and help uphold a peaceful international order.
(Featured photo by Yonghoon Jang on Pixabay)
