The Facebook page of Taiwan's president-elect Tsai Ing-wen has been flooded with comments and stickers calling Taiwan an inalienable part of China and rejecting the idea of the island's independence from the mainland, as part of an online campaign executed by members of an Internet forum, as reported by the Global Times.
The Facebook pages of several of Taiwan's pro-independence media outlets have also been flooded by the same group.
The move is the latest in a series of clashes between the netizens of mainland China and Taiwan that began with Taiwan's general election wherein Tsai, the chairwoman of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), won by a landslide.
The group that flooded Tsai's Facebook page came from members of the forum Di Ba, which is hosted by Baidu. Their comments started coming in on Wednesday despite Facebook being blocked in the Chinese mainland.
According to analysts, the online campaign reflects how mainland youth perceive the One China question. They also called on netizens to practice restraint.
Comments and stickers from mainland netizens began to flood Tsai's Facebook page and the pages of Taiwan-based SETN.com and Hong Kong-based Apple Daily starting seven o'clock on Wednesday night.
By Thursday night, one of Tsai's posts on Facebook had over 43,000 comments.
The surprisingly well-organized crusade had participants separated into different groups that were delegated different tasks, like designing stickers or collecting information.
For the campaign, Di Ba used the slogan "When Di Ba goes into battle, nothing will grow."
The campaign's organizers stressed that their aim is to show their disapproval of Taiwan independence without targeting the residents of Taiwan.
"The voices from the netizens, especially among the youth, will benefit our opposition toward Taiwan independence," said Zhang Yiwu, a professor at Peking University. "The independence-leaning forces in the past used public opinion in Taiwan to put pressure on the mainland and the timely response will deal a powerful counterattack."
Prior to the campaign, Taiwanese netizens flooded mainland actor Lin Gengxin's Facebook page with comments earlier in the week. On Saturday, Lin implied in a Sina Weibo post that the apology of Taiwanese pop singer Chou Tzu-yu for waving Taiwan's flag on a television show did not seem sincere.
The campaign by mainland netizens was interpreted as a counterstrike.
SET News later responded to the campaign, saying the stickers were "so funny" and that mainland citizens "work so hard."