Beijing timed a propaganda campaign to Taiwan's October 10 National Day, aiming to make Taiwanese doubt US support and believe Washington would abandon them — a direct hit at Taiwan's morale.

• The push combined diplomacy and sentiment: distorting World War II history at high-level talks, then releasing a bilingual film about "coming home" to dress up unification messaging.
• The goal is to spread two ideas inside Taiwan — that the US cannot be trusted, and that Taiwan will be left on its own.
• Taiwan's defense ministry hit back with its own National Day films and war-history features, including the record of Chinese and American pilots fighting side by side, to show the wartime government was the Republic of China.
• Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office restated the "one China" principle after the ceremony and tried to claim the wartime victory as its own political property; Taipei rejected both.

Outlook: Taipei plans to keep answering each campaign rather than stay quiet, on the view that silence would let Beijing's version fill the space at home and abroad.