China's CCTV airs drone video of Taipei 101 during Justice Mission 2025 drill

During the People's Liberation Army's Justice Mission 2025 exercise around Taiwan on 29-30 December 2025, China's state broadcaster CCTV released aerial footage purporting to show a drone flying close to the Taipei 101 skyscraper in central Taipei. The imagery implied that a PLA drone had penetrated the airspace over Taiwan's capital during the drill. Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense (MND), through its Political Warfare Bureau, publicly rejected the implied claim, as reported by Focus Taiwan, the English service of Taiwan's national news agency CNA.

The MND stated that while drone activity was detected in the area during the exercise, no drone entered Taiwan's 24-nautical-mile contiguous zone, contradicting the impression created by the CCTV clip. The ministry characterised the video as a piece of cognitive warfare timed to amplify the psychological effect of the drill. According to the MND, it was one of dozens of disinformation items logged since the exercise began.

The Taipei Times reported that the military identified 46 pieces of Chinese disinformation circulated during the drill, of which the Taipei 101 drone footage was among the most prominent. The ministry urged the public not to share unverified material and framed the release as part of a coordinated information campaign accompanying the PLA's Justice Mission 2025 drill, which disrupted air and sea corridors near Kinmen and Matsu.

Taiwan's MND assesses the CCTV footage as cognitive warfare designed to overstate the PLA's reach during the exercise, an assessment supported by the ministry's tracking that no drone breached the contiguous zone. The release fits a documented pattern of Chinese information operations paired with military pressure, comparable to the AI-driven influence activity exposed in leaked GoLaxy documents. The attribution to a deliberate state-media disinformation effort rests on Taiwan's official characterisation rather than independent forensic confirmation of intent. This entry may be updated as further public information or analysis of the footage emerges.