A false news report that went viral last week claimed that a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force Sukoi Su-35 jet had breached Taiwanese airspace, been shot down, and its pilot captured and taken prisoner.
Grafted onto the fictitious report were photographs and video taken elsewhere of a crashed fighter jet.
The viral post was convincing enough to dupe many people and force the Ministry of National Defense on Friday last week to post a rebuttal on Twitter.
It cannot be ruled out that the story might have been covertly instigated by China as part of a multi-faceted disinformation campaign.
Leveraging all of its propaganda channels to spread falsehoods and paint China as a “victim,” Beijing might have intended to use the story to dupe the international community and provide justification for launching a “just” counterattack against Taiwan, which would have had a massive domino effect.
The government cannot afford to ignore this possibility.
A good analogy is Nazi Germany during the buildup to World War II. To create a justification for invading Poland, the German military staged a false-flag attack on a radio station in Gleiwitz, Germany, on the night of Aug. 31, 1939. A small contingent of German operatives dressed in Polish military uniforms attacked and occupied the radio station, and broadcast an anti-German message in Polish.
The following day, Adolf Hitler used this and other orchestrated incidents along the Polish-German border as justification to brand Poland a “hostile nation” and use them as a pretext for conducting “defensive” military maneuvers, the overt phase of Germany’s invasion plan.
Germany is not the only nation to have acted in such a way.
Without warning, North Korean troops on June 25, 1950, crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea and launched an invasion. Pyongyang justified the military campaign as necessary to counter an invasion by the South.
Then-North Korean leader Kim Il-sung accused the South of acting under US orders and carrying out an unprovoked attack.
He justified the invasion as “retaliation for provocation by the traitorous South.”
Given such precedents, the government must take precautions before it is too late and include the possibility of a false-flag attack in national security planning.
It is possible that Beijing might emulate the tactics of Nazi Germany or North Korea, and provide justification for an invasion of Taiwan using a disinformation campaign as a “first strike.”
China aims to use its wider “Three Wars” military strategy — psychological, public opinion and legal warfare — to place itself in an advantageous position before a “hot” war.
Taiwan’s ability to disseminate information to the outside world is surpassed by China’s massive propaganda machine and the government would struggle to put up a robust defense against a concerted disinformation operation.
Huang Wei-ping is a former think tank researcher.
Translated by Edward Jones
Elbridge Colby, America’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, is the most influential voice on defense strategy in the Second Trump Administration. For insight into his thinking, one could do no better than read his thoughts on the defense of Taiwan which he gathered in a book he wrote in 2021. The Strategy of Denial, is his contemplation of China’s rising hegemony in Asia and on how to deter China from invading Taiwan. Allowing China to absorb Taiwan, he wrote, would open the entire Indo-Pacific region to Chinese preeminence and result in a power transition that would place America’s prosperity
When Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) first suggested a mass recall of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators, the Taipei Times called the idea “not only absurd, but also deeply undemocratic” (“Lai’s speech and legislative chaos,” Jan. 6, page 8). In a subsequent editorial (“Recall chaos plays into KMT hands,” Jan. 9, page 8), the paper wrote that his suggestion was not a solution, and that if it failed, it would exacerbate the enmity between the parties and lead to a cascade of revenge recalls. The danger came from having the DPP orchestrate a mass recall. As it transpired,
All 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and suspended Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安), formerly of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), survived recall elections against them on Saturday, in a massive loss to the unprecedented mass recall movement, as well as to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that backed it. The outcome has surprised many, as most analysts expected that at least a few legislators would be ousted. Over the past few months, dedicated and passionate civic groups gathered more than 1 million signatures to recall KMT lawmakers, an extraordinary achievement that many believed would be enough to remove at
A few weeks ago in Kaohsiung, tech mogul turned political pundit Robert Tsao (曹興誠) joined Western Washington University professor Chen Shih-fen (陳時奮) for a public forum in support of Taiwan’s recall campaign. Kaohsiung, already the most Taiwanese independence-minded city in Taiwan, was not in need of a recall. So Chen took a different approach: He made the case that unification with China would be too expensive to work. The argument was unusual. Most of the time, we hear that Taiwan should remain free out of respect for democracy and self-determination, but cost? That is not part of the usual script, and
RSS