As next year’s presidential election gets closer, there are increasing concerns in Taiwan regarding the issue of election interference by China.
Short-video sharing apps on mobile devices have become all the rage recently, and one of the most popular of these is Douyin and its international version TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd.
TikTok has 4 million users in Taiwan alone, and people in the 18 to 24 age range account for 40 percent. These users regard TikTok as a source of news, information and entertainment, with other Chinese apps like Xiaohongshu becoming main amusement sources in people’s daily lives.
From a user’s perspective, TikTok can ensure that specific content can go viral and have a major impact in Taiwan, and this is primarily down to specific tricks it has up its sleeve: a recommendation algorithm catering to users’ preferences, short videos with abundant information that suit people living in modern societies and the weight of peer pressure, with the implication that if people are not using it, they are out of the loop.
TikTok is a double-edged sword in that users’ senses are quickly satisfied with short videos. It removes the patience and concentration required to analyze complicated public affairs, fragments users’ attention and diverts their minds over the long run, adversely affecting the young generation’s mental developlment.
TikTok and Douyin even pose a threat to national security and privacy due to loopholes in data security. ByteDance’s Beijing headquarters owns a golden share in the company: That is, it has more power than other shareholders over changes in its management. In addition, the Chinese Communist Party has a presence inside the company, meaning that it can have influence over business decisions and backdoor access to the data of users throughout the world, and it allows Beijing to have a say in TikTok’s recommendation algorithm, deciding what each user sees.
Recently, Beijing fabricated the meeting minutes of the South China Sea Conference, with the rumor that Taipei has agreed to develop biological weapons for the US, and streamed this disinformation on TikTok.
If Beijing is capable of doing this, who can ensure that it would not use TikTok as a tool, waging a larger scale of public opinion warfare against Taiwan?
When the government tried to address the problem of cognitive warfare in recent years it insisted on a policy of platform neutrality, so that it does not check on the vectors of cognitive warfare, concentrating solely on the content.
Furthermore, the controversy over the draft digital intermediary service act has meant that the government has had to shelve it, missing the opportunity of regulating Chinese apps such as TikTok.
If the government starts to control Chinese apps for the coming election, even with legitimately and with goodwill, it would be criticized by Beijing and its allies in Taiwan, opening it up to manipulation by opposition parties saying that the Democratic Progressive Party is “the enemy of the younger generation.”
Regulating TikTok and other Chinese social media apps would test the government’s wisdom on rapidly raising public awareness of the risk of Chinese apps and lowering its effect on Taiwanese.
Roger Wu works in the service industry and is a part-time freelance writer.
Translated by Polly Chiu
In the event of a war with China, Taiwan has some surprisingly tough defenses that could make it as difficult to tackle as a porcupine: A shoreline dotted with swamps, rocks and concrete barriers; conscription for all adult men; highways and airports that are built to double as hardened combat facilities. This porcupine has a soft underbelly, though, and the war in Iran is exposing it: energy. About 39,000 ships dock at Taiwan’s ports each year, more than the 30,000 that transit the Strait of Hormuz. About one-fifth of their inbound tonnage is coal, oil, refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG),
On Monday, the day before Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) departed on her visit to China, the party released a promotional video titled “Only with peace can we ‘lie flat’” to highlight its desire to have peace across the Taiwan Strait. However, its use of the expression “lie flat” (tang ping, 躺平) drew sarcastic comments, with critics saying it sounded as if the party was “bowing down” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Amid the controversy over the opposition parties blocking proposed defense budgets, Cheng departed for China after receiving an invitation from the CCP, with a meeting with
To counter the CCP’s escalating threats, Taiwan must build a national consensus and demonstrate the capability and the will to fight. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) often leans on a seductive mantra to soften its threats, such as “Chinese do not kill Chinese.” The slogan is designed to frame territorial conquest (annexation) as a domestic family matter. A look at the historical ledger reveals a different truth. For the CCP, being labeled “family” has never been a guarantee of safety; it has been the primary prerequisite for state-sanctioned slaughter. From the forced starvation of 150,000 civilians at the Siege of Changchun
The two major opposition parties, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), jointly announced on Tuesday last week that former TPP lawmaker Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) would be their joint candidate for Chiayi mayor, following polling conducted earlier this month. It is the first case of blue-white (KMT-TPP) cooperation in selecting a joint candidate under an agreement signed by their chairpersons last month. KMT and TPP supporters have blamed their 2024 presidential election loss on failing to decide on a joint candidate, which ended in a dramatic breakdown with participants pointing fingers, calling polls unfair, sobbing and walking
RSS