{"id":78657,"date":"2023-03-30T12:00:54","date_gmt":"2023-03-30T01:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=78657"},"modified":"2023-03-30T11:03:51","modified_gmt":"2023-03-30T00:03:51","slug":"disinformation-and-democratic-resilience-in-taiwan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/disinformation-and-democratic-resilience-in-taiwan\/","title":{"rendered":"Disinformation and democratic resilience in Taiwan"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Since 2000, Taiwan has been a\u00a0top target<\/a>\u00a0of misinformation campaigns largely propagated by the Chinese Communist Party and its proxies. China\u2019s primary objective in spreading disinformation is to undermine trust in Taiwan\u2019s democracy and governance. Beijing hopes to convince Taiwanese citizens that the only way to avoid war is to\u00a0support<\/a>\u00a0its plans to \u2018peacefully<\/a>\u2019 unify Taiwan with mainland China.<\/p>\n

Taiwan\u2019s robust democracy is underpinned by freedom of speech, press and association\u2014liberties that China seeks to\u00a0exploit<\/a>\u00a0to spread disinformation. In the past few years, numerous CCP-backed campaigns have targeted Taiwan\u2019s commercial news outlets and social media landscape. False stories are often generated by\u00a0content farms<\/a>\u2014websites that produce large quantities of low-quality content designed to place highly on search engine results\u2014then republished in Taiwanese media and amplified by state-sponsored accounts.<\/p>\n

The CCP\u2019s messaging has evolved over time. Pro-unification\u00a0rhetoric<\/a>\u00a0has lessened, while content purporting to be from local citizens, written in the traditional Chinese characters commonly used in Taiwan and claiming to care about Taiwanese politics and society, has increased. For the CCP, such disinformation remains a cost-effective method to interfere with Taiwanese electoral politics. Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, the CCP spread\u00a0falsehoods<\/a>\u00a0about President Tsai Ing-wen forging her doctoral thesis, leading to the London School of Economics\u00a0releasing<\/a>\u00a0a statement refuting the claims. After the election, Chinese disinformation\u00a0campaigns<\/a>\u00a0tried to discredit Tsai\u2019s victory and claimed it was manipulated by the CIA.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s disinformation also aims to increase political polarisation and sow public discord. In 2018, Chinese media outlets\u00a0amplified<\/a>\u00a0criticisms that Taiwanese diplomats were unable to evacuate Taiwanese citizens from Osaka during a typhoon and spread falsehoods that Taiwanese citizens had to claim they were Chinese to be evacuated. During the Covid-19\u00a0pandemic<\/a>, Chinese state-sponsored actors\u00a0spread<\/a>\u00a0disinformation about Taiwan\u2019s Medigen vaccine and tried to discredit officials with fake stories about non-compliance with social distancing rules.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s attempts to\u00a0bring Taiwan closer<\/a>\u00a0to the mainland via political co-optation and preferential economics have\u00a0largely failed<\/a>, especially after the passing of Hong Kong\u2019s national security law discredited the CCP\u2019s \u2018one country, two systems\u2019 framework. Beijing will increasingly rely on what Tsai has\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0\u2018cognitive warfare\u2019\u2014the use of \u2018false information to create disturbance in the minds of the people\u2019.<\/p>\n

This cognitive warfare is deployed alongside near-daily cyberattacks, drone flights and military exercises around Taiwan. Regular use of these tactics aims to wear down Taiwan\u2019s military and civil reactions, as well as to undermine public trust in Taipei\u2019s ability to protect its citizens. Disguising fake and misleading news as Taiwanese-produced content could reduce Taiwanese citizens\u2019 abilities to discern fact from fiction and weaken social trust in Taiwanese news outlets.<\/p>\n

But as China\u2019s efforts have evolved, so too have Taiwan\u2019s responses. Civil-society organisations such as\u00a0Taiwan FactCheck<\/a>\u00a0fact-check public interest issues;\u00a0Cofacts<\/a> runs a crowdsourced platform for Line, a popular messaging app; and Doublethink Lab<\/a> maintains a set of tools to counter conspiracy theories and propaganda. A volunteer-led organisation,\u00a0FakeNewsCleaner<\/a>, holds media literacy workshops to help people distinguish misleading information.<\/p>\n

Such civil-society initiatives are needed due to the\u00a0vulnerability<\/a>\u00a0of Taiwan\u2019s deregulated commercial media landscape, in which many media shareholders have business interests with mainland China. Introducing\u00a0laws<\/a>\u00a0to penalise those that spread false information will be unlikely to have a deterrent effect due to the length of time it takes to detect malicious actors and prosecute them in Taiwanese courts.<\/p>\n

Taiwan\u2019s Ministry of\u00a0Digital Affairs\u00a0has also introduced a range of measures to combat disinformation, including the\u00a0g0v<\/a>\u00a0civic hacking program and a bilingual Google assistant chatbot for the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control. One of the most effective approaches continues to be \u2018humour over rumour<\/a>\u2019, in which fake news is reposted on social media with humorous memes, such as a\u00a0Shiba Inu dog<\/a>, explaining the facts. Most of these initiatives are based on Taiwan\u2019s Digital Minister Audrey Tang\u2019s belief that\u00a0technology should strengthen democracy<\/a>\u00a0by ensuring open data, transparency and accountability tools.<\/p>\n

This approach also recognises that the government can\u2019t counter Chinese state-sponsored disinformation through excessive regulation of Taiwan\u2019s digital landscape or by limiting freedom of expression. Such moves would weaken Taiwan\u2019s\u00a0democratic credentials<\/a>, which are critical to demonstrating that the island is a distinct polity from mainland China.<\/p>\n

In 2022, public criticism led to the shelving of a\u00a0law<\/a>\u00a0proposed by the Tsai administration to fine internet platforms for failing to remove harmful content. Since the bill would have put government agencies in charge of defining disinformation, it was perceived as an attempt by the government to punish critical content and restrict internet participation. The same criticism was levelled by opposition parties at Tsai for proposing\u00a0amendments<\/a>\u00a0in February this year to the General Mobilization Act. The changes would allow the government to enforce wartime controls on information in the digital, broadcasting and publishing domains, and those found responsible for spreading disinformation could face up to three years in jail.<\/p>\n

Beijing\u2019s attempts to economically coerce and militarily intimidate Taiwan to accept unification will continue to be accompanied by attempts to polarise\u00a0Taiwanese society<\/a>. Understanding how Taiwan balances robust oversight and regulation, high civic participation and a diverse media will also be critical for other countries seeking to counter Beijing\u2019s\u00a0interference<\/a>\u00a0in democratic processes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since 2000, Taiwan has been a\u00a0top target\u00a0of misinformation campaigns largely propagated by the Chinese Communist Party and its proxies. China\u2019s primary objective in spreading disinformation is to undermine trust in Taiwan\u2019s democracy and governance. Beijing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":159,"featured_media":78658,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,3211,106,2279,730,392],"class_list":["post-78657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-china","tag-coercion","tag-democracy","tag-disinformation","tag-media","tag-taiwan"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDisinformation and democratic resilience in Taiwan | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/disinformation-and-democratic-resilience-in-taiwan\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Disinformation and democratic resilience in Taiwan | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Since 2000, Taiwan has been a\u00a0top target\u00a0of misinformation campaigns largely propagated by the Chinese Communist Party and its proxies. 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