Cybersecurity experts say at least 15 Facebook pages that a Taipei city councilor accused of running a paid online campaign for Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) mayoral candidate Puma Shen actually belong to a content farm based in China's Hebei province, adding a new twist to the 2026 Taiwan local elections.
New Party Taipei City Councilor Hou Han-ting raised the alarm on October 18, after noticing that pages with unrelated names and themes had all posted the same political news image under an identical caption: "The Yang Wave strikes." The phrase refers to the surge of support for Shen, whose Chinese given name ends with the character "Yang."
Hou Questions Who Is Paying for the Posts
In a Facebook post, Hou said he had collected at least 15 such pages publishing the same image in a short span of time. If an operation this crude, built on copying and pasting, could be billed to political backers, he asked, how enormous must the online propaganda budget be in this year's Taipei mayoral race?
"Is it the Yang Wave at work, or the New Taiwan dollar at work?" Hou wrote, implying that the apparent groundswell for Shen was being bought.
Experts Trace the Pages to Hebei
Cybersecurity experts who examined the pages offered a different explanation. They identified the network as the Borderless Group, a content farm operation based in Qinhuangdao, a city in Hebei province, that makes money by drawing traffic with sensational stories.
According to the experts, the group runs its pages through virtual private networks (VPNs) routed via other countries, including Malaysia, so that they appear to be operated from overseas. Large numbers of pages post the same material at once to inflate reach, and the links attached to their eye-catching posts lead readers to content farm websites run by the group, where the traffic is turned into revenue.
Past analysis shows how the formula works. One page in the network posted a headline claiming a major overnight disaster had killed at least 55 people; the story turned out to be a tour bus crash in Latin America. Another warned that a "presidential office" had been bombed, which turned out to refer to a Houthi attack on the presidential palace in Aden, Yemen.
Clickbait That Sometimes Turns Political
The experts said profit is not the group's only output. Political scientist Austin Horng-En Wang previously found that the Borderless Group used AI to rewrite and publish articles expressing support for Iran in an apparent attempt to steer public opinion. The pages also post politically manipulative content from time to time, the experts said.
Taiwan's government has repeatedly warned that China uses disinformation and online influence operations to sway Taiwanese voters, and the Borderless Group finding shows how commercial clickbait networks based in China can blur into election messaging during the campaign.
Opposition Claims of Paid Trolls Draw Scrutiny
The experts also criticized a pattern among some opposition politicians of accusing rivals of "spending money" or of "the New Taiwan dollar at work" whenever the race turns against them.
They pointed to an earlier episode in which Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an's Facebook page was flooded with comments overnight. An analysis by TPOC, a Taiwan issues research center, found that the comments were not simply the work of a troll army but a collective action driven by large numbers of real users. None of the 10 most liked comments followed the highly similar templates seen in coordinated posts; instead, they were rhetorical questions or mocking remarks written by users themselves.
Shen Leads Chiang in Latest Taipei Mayoral Poll
The dispute comes as the Taipei mayoral contest, the marquee race of the 2026 Taiwan local elections, has tightened sharply in Shen's favor. A poll released on October 20 put Shen at 50.3% and Chiang, the Kuomintang (KMT) incumbent seeking a second term, at 33.3%, a reversal from September, when Chiang led 41.7% to 40.5%.
The survey was commissioned by the Xinmin Cross-Strait Research Association, designed by pollster Dai Li-an, and conducted by Beacon Market Research by telephone from October 14 to 16. It drew 1,075 valid responses from Taipei residents aged 20 or older, with a maximum margin of error of plus or minus 3.0 percentage points. Other polls have shown a closer race, and Chiang has said polls are "only a reference."
Voters across Taiwan will elect mayors, county magistrates, and local councilors in the 2026 Taiwan local elections, known as the Nine-in-One Elections, on November 28.
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