Taiwan’s World War II Comfort Women Issue Utilized in Chinese Messaging Campaign

China’s State TV Exploits Taiwan’s Comfort Women Museum for Political Propaganda

Taiwan’s Ama Museum, established in 2016 as a memorial to honor survivors of wartime sexual slavery, has become an unwitting participant in Chinese propaganda after being misled by China Central Television (CCTV). The museum in Taipei, managed by the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation, was approached to participate in what was presented as a documentary about World War II. Instead, the footage was repurposed into political propaganda targeting Taiwan’s current government.

The deception was straightforward but effective. CCTV promised the foundation that the footage would not be used politically. However, the resulting broadcast was heavily politicized, portraying Taiwan’s President William Lai as a warmonger and the Democratic Progressive Party as subservient to Japan. The documentary framed China as the sole guardian of peace in the region, manipulating the painful testimonies of comfort women survivors to advance Beijing’s geopolitical narrative.

This manipulation is particularly jarring given the complex nature of Taiwan’s comfort women issue. Unlike South Korea, where the narrative of Japanese victimization has solidified into national consensus, Taiwan’s historical memory remains fractured. The survivors came from diverse backgrounds—some Taiwanese, others Chinese or Southeast Asian—and were recruited through various means during Japanese colonial rule.

The politics of memory in Taiwan is further complicated by generational and political divides. Older Taiwanese citizens, educated under Japanese colonial rule, often maintain ambivalent or even positive views of Japan. Politically, the Kuomintang party has emphasized Chinese victimhood, while the Democratic Progressive Party has taken a more cautious approach to preserve Taiwan’s strategic relationship with Japan.

CCTV exploited these divisions to weaponize trauma. The documentary reframed survivors’ testimonies as evidence of Taiwan’s alleged recklessness and “subservience” to Japan. The museum’s educational mission was corrupted, transforming a space meant to honor dignity into a backdrop for political attacks against Taiwan’s leadership.

The bitter irony is that survivors of wartime sexual slavery, whose experiences testify to the horrors of militarism, were used in propaganda that attacks Taiwan’s efforts to resist military pressure from Beijing. Their personal stories, entrusted to the museum as historical testimony, have been twisted into weapons against the very society that sought to honor them.

Taiwan’s complex relationship with Japan makes this manipulation especially potent. Japan’s legacy in Taiwan is nuanced—it was both a colonizer and a cultural influence that left behind infrastructure, education, and lingering cultural affinities. This ambivalence has prevented the comfort women issue from becoming the rallying cry in Taiwan that it became in Korea.

The Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation has protested the misuse of their museum, emphasizing that they advocate for memory and truth, not hatred. This distinction—truth without hatred—runs counter to the propagandistic needs of Beijing, which relies on stoking animosity to support its narrative. The comfort women issue, already complicated in Taiwan, now risks being permanently reframed as a Chinese talking point rather than a human rights cause.

This incident exemplifies Beijing’s broader strategy of weaponizing historical memory to advance present-day geopolitical goals. Whether regarding the Nanjing Massacre, the Opium Wars, or the comfort women, historical events are utilized as tools for legitimacy, grievance, and control. While the CCTV documentary claimed to be “anti-war,” it effectively served as a condemnation of Taiwan’s defense policies and a justification for China’s military intimidation.

The comfort women issue deserves serious, nuanced discussion as a matter of historical justice, gender violence, and collective memory. Taiwan’s ongoing conversation about this painful history should be addressed through dialogue, scholarship, and empathy—not through propaganda that exploits survivors’ experiences.

The manipulation of the Ama Museum stands as a cautionary tale of how authoritarian regimes exploit institutional goodwill, hijack spaces of remembrance, and weaponize trauma. Ultimately, the comfort women issue transcends geopolitical rivalries—it represents a universal struggle to honor survivors of violence with dignity rather than reducing them to political pawns.