Beijing has established a government agency charged with disseminating disinformation in Taiwan for the purposes of influencing public morale and causing rifts within society, a source at a national security agency has said.
The confirmation came after President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) Double Ten National Day speech in which she described the need for alertness in the face of widespread disinformation.
China’s use of “fake” news has also been recognized by Japanese media, including the Sankei Shimbun, the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Asahi Shimbun.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The newspapers all described as fake news Chinese reports of buses dispatched by the Chinese consulate in Osaka to pick up passengers stranded at Kansai International Airport following Typhoon Jebi early last month.
Following the reports it was discovered that a post on Professional Technology Temple (PTT) — the nation’s largest online bulletin board — allegedly from a disgruntled Taiwanese passenger was actually posted by a Chinese user after the IP address was traced to Beijing.
The post was attributed to a Chinese government task force responsible for destabilizing the Tsai administration by spreading disinformation on everyday issues through social media and other online platforms, the source said.
The Chinese government provides financial rewards for any fake news posts picked up by Taiwanese media, the source said.
Tsai has expressed interest in collaborating with foreign governments to establish a mechanism for tracking and responding to the threat from fake news, the source said, adding that the president’s raising of the issue in her national day speech was evidence of the seriousness of the matter.
The prevalence of social media platforms has exacerbated the spread of misinformation and created even more divisions within Taiwanese society, which was already divided by pan-blue and pan-green partisanship, the source said.
One post on PTT in May, shortly after the severing of diplomatic ties between Taiwan and Burkina Faso, had claimed that Honduras was in talks with Beijing and would also sever ties with the nation.
The post, which caused uproar on social media, was later traced to a Chinese disinformation mill apparently being sponsored by the Chinese government, the source said.
Addressing the threat of systematic dissemination of disinformation from a single source nation demands immediate action, international cooperation and assistance from the public, the source said.
Having information audited by a third party that would inform the public of false information is one possible solution, while another is to have a government agency monitor online information and respond to it through legal systems and institutions, the source said.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS