The phrase “grand external propaganda strategy,” which has gained publicity recently, refers to the overseas propaganda campaign that China has been pushing on the world since 2009.
Since taking power in 2012, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has increased campaign efforts. The effect has been most powerfully felt during the COVID-19 pandemic, as China is trying to use the media to turn its image from that of a “pathogen” into that of a “savior.”
This includes claiming that the virus originated in the US, reporting zero new domestic cases of COVID-19 infection, and proclaiming its willingness to share its disease prevention experience with the world.
That the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is skilled at propaganda is no news. During the Yanan period of the Chinese Civil War, US journalist Edgar Snow interviewed Mao Zedong (毛澤東) and other CCP founding members. Snow published his account in the book Red Star Over China and depicted the party’s down-to-earth attitude.
The book is considered a key factor in the CCP’s ability to later gain international support.
It was not until Snow traveled to China again years later that he discovered the reality was different from what he had seen in the past, and he expressed deep regret over the book.
If the CCP even during that existential crisis was so good at image-building, China today — backed by an integrated party organization and a tremendous amount of resources — is having much more success than before.
The public opinion and psychological warfare tools available to an authoritarian state and a democratic state are unequal. Advances in broadcast media further give “grand external propaganda” a higher priority.
This is what US political scientist Joseph Nye, former US assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, refers to as “sharp power.”
In Chinese communities, Chinese propaganda is more often called “red infiltration.”
To prevent the situation from worsening, US President Donald Trump took the lead, saying: “Our Country’s biggest enemy is the Fake News so easily promulgated by fools!” in a June 13, 2018, tweet, shortly after meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore.
Many countries have subsequently followed in Trump’s footsteps.
Taiwan’s government is adopting administrative and judicial means to fight fake news. Concrete actions include trying to amend the law to make dissemination of misinformation a crime, pushing the online Taiwan FactCheck Center, and establishing misinformation prevention units in prosecution and investigation agencies.
Nevertheless, these actions are passive in nature, placing more emphasis on defense than on attacking misinformation.
The reason is that most people perceive political propaganda as being a routine trick used by totalitarian governments and thus something to be avoided by democratic governments. Such thinking could very possibly prevent Taiwan from setting the agenda.
Whether a nation promotes itself should not be a criterion when judging whether its intentions are good or bad. It should be determined by looking at what it promotes and whether it deviates from the truth.
During the pandemic, Taiwan has accomplished many outstanding achievements covered by international media.
While praise from other nations certainly enhances Taiwan’s reputation, its soft power could be more effectively demonstrated if it were more proactive in promoting disease-prevention results and showing the world that efficiency and compliance are not exclusive to totalitarian regimes.
Yang Chung-hsin is a China affairs researcher.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
RSS