In the new year China has threatened to use force against Taiwan. That's an interesting angle:
[Despite] declaring that “Chinese will not fight Chinese,” [Chinese ruler Xi] refused to renounce the use of force to prevent Taiwan from seeking formal independence. China must, in his words, “reserve the option to take any necessary measure,” though he claims that the threat is aimed at “external forces and at an extremely small number of ‘Taiwan independence’ separatists.”
If the Chinese invade, the Chinese want the Taiwanese to believe that China will accept the fiction that few Taiwanese want to resist China. Ideally, from China's point of view, this encourages Taiwanese to not resist and blame those "extremely small number" of separatists denying most people their heart's desire of joining China.
This fits well with my earlier view on Chinese propaganda during an invasion that would try to isolate the Taiwanese troops from the world and make them feel all alone:
Broadcasts will urge the Taiwanese military to stand aside. Some might. The Chinese will announce that unlawful combatants, which will include all the Taiwanese military, will not be treated as POWs but as criminals. The Chinese will claim the world considers this an internal matter and give wide play to any real statements to that effect. If any US Senator urges caution in reacting, that too will be played to the Taiwanese. The Chinese want the 23 million Taiwanese to feel alone and facing the power of 1.3 billion Chinese charging hard at them. Of course, ethnic solidarity will be emphasized and the pride of a powerful China able to end the long humiliation at the hands of the West will be used to convince Taiwanese soldiers to defect or go home.
If the Taiwanese feel alone and doomed, they will grasp at the offered way out by pretending that those who fight the Chinese invaders are a small minority egged on by "external forces."
Would such a propaganda campaign work? I don't know. But war isn't won or lost by comparing weapon systems. Real people win or lose wars.
UPDATE: Related thoughts.
UPDATE: And of course, Taiwan should try to avoid the test of how hard their troops will fight an invasion by becoming the capital of democracy that will test the will of China's troops to fight a Chinese protest movement for freedom.
