Digital domination: China’s battle for minds, from Lhasa to Ladakh and Taipei |
The digital realm was initially envisaged as a great equalizer of knowledge, breaking down barriers of geography, class, and institutional gatekeeping to make huge repositories of information freely accessible to anyone with an internet connection, to empower individuals across the world, to learn, to innovate, and to challenge pre-established narratives on an unprecedented scale. However, what the digital realm has now been turned into is the paramount battlefield of the 21st century, wherein states vie for territory, not just through conventional arms, but dominance over perceptions, narratives, and decision-making. This marks the rise of cognitive warfare, or the strategy that weaponizes information to shape minds, erode trust, and achieve strategic objectives, without even firing a shot.
China has pioneered the approach, as part of its ‘unrestricted warfare’ doctrine, integrating propaganda, disinformation, cyber operations, and psychological manipulation to influence the cognitive environments of its adversaries. People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) People’s Liberation Army (PLA) explicitly sees the human brain as the new domain of conflict, aspiring for cognitive dominance, through coordinated campaigns that exploit social media, AI-generated content, and state-affiliated networks.
A stark example of this tactic was recently witnessed early this year, following the U.S. Department of Justice’s release of additional Jeffrey Epstein files. Chinese state-controlled media and affiliated outlets amplify claims that the Dalai Lama was deeply implicated, highlighting mentions of his name over 150 times, often citing emails where Epstein speculated about meetings or events. China Global Television Network, for example, published an article titled, “Dalai Lama’s name appeared at least 169 times in Epstein files. The Office of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, unequivocally stated that no meeting ever occurred, and no interactions were authorized, and the references were aspirational at best, with no evidence of any connection or wrongdoing. The timing of PRC outlets and narratives on social media is worth noting and emerged immediately after the Dalai Lama’s Grammy Award win. The objective was to tarnish his global moral authority and to undermine Tibetan cultural identity.
The tactic is not new. In 2023, as well, China’s “Pedophile” Smear Campaign tried to tarnish the image of His Holiness. In 2023 again, Global Times tried portraying pre-1959 Tibet as a feudal, slave society under the Dalai Lama’s theocratic rule, accusing him of being a slave owner. In 2021 as well, the Global Times’ white paper reprint, titled “Tibet Since 1951: Liberation, Development and Prosperity, tried showcasing Tibet as ruled by a theocratic, feudal serfdom, that “crushed human dignity, ignored human rights, and impeded development”.
These oft-repeated episodes exemplify how Beijing exploits the digital realm to sow doubt, leveraging platforms, to spread narratives to attempt to portray the Dalai Lama as morally compromised, aligning with China’s long-standing efforts to delegitimize him as a “separatist”.
China’s cognitive warfare against the Dalai Lama is neither isolated nor new. For decades, as seen in the given examples, Beijing has targeted Tibetan exile networks, through cyber-attacks, such as the 2009 GhostNet operation that infiltrated the Dalai Lama’s offices, to ongoing smear campaigns to portray him as a threat to stability. The attempt is to erase Tibetan autonomy in global perceptions, and to manufacture consent for assimilationist policies in Tibet. The tactic now is to flood digital spaces with false scandals, and to diminish his influence among Tibetans and supporters in India and elsewhere.
India also has repeatedly found itself on the receiving end of similar cognitive warfare from China, which gets heightened during recurring border conflicts initiated by China. Just one example out of myriads is from 2020, when, during the Galwan Valley clash, Chinese state-owned media downplayed PLA casualties, and blamed India for provocation, while amplifying calls for boycotts of Indian goods. Beijing has also issued provocative and incorrect geographical maps, come up with names for locations in Arunachal Pradesh, and combined legal warfare with disinformation to try to normalise territorial claims. Cyber intrusions have targeted Indian power grids in Ladakh, Mumbai, and Telangana, and tried to exfiltrate data from India’s ministries, while Chinese-linked networks spread disinformation on social media to exploit domestic fissures. Diaspora communities have also been targeted to sow discord.
Taiwan stands as perhaps the most intensively targeted recipient of China’s cognitive warfare laboratory. Bots, fake accounts, and pro-unification propaganda are difficult to miss in Taiwan, and tactics also include spreading rumours about candidates contesting elections and portraying unification as inevitable and beneficial for Taiwan. The ways in which China targets candidates contesting elections in Taiwan are similar to its smear campaigns against the Dalai Lama; while the ways in which China tries to dampen military morale in Taiwan are similar to its objectives vis-à-vis India. What China also attempts in democracies is to co-opt media, to self-censor on topics that China considers sensitive- such as Tibet or the Dalai Lama, and this illustrates how cognitive operations interact with hybrid coercion.
Other countries, such as Australia, also face parallel threats. Chinese-linked networks have tried to interfere in referendums and elections. In 2025, for example, Beijing appeared to support Labor’s re-election through subtle online campaigns on platforms popular among Chinese Australians, such as WeChat and RedNote (Xiaohongshu); and these included resurfacing old misleading narratives about politicians’ stances on China-related issues, potentially enhanced by generative AI for translated videos or fabricated endorsements. The Philippines and Vietnam also encounter maritime dispute focussed disinformation, and all these examples reveal a pattern that China deploys in its cognitive warfare- to weaken the cohesion of adversaries, to isolate them diplomatically, and to prepare the ground for coercion or conflict.
Ignoring the digital battleground risks ceding strategic advantage in an era where victory is based on the control of cognition, and not just on the conquest of land. As the attempt to link the Dalai Lama to Epstein shows, Beijing’s operations are highly adaptive, opportunistic, and relentless. Communities and countries at the receiving end of China’s cognitive warfare have to prepare their defences in advance, while unifying countermeasures to safeguard open societies.
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