The Chinese government is using TikTok and other social media platforms to sow discontent among Taiwanese over policy issues, and to sway young voters toward pro-China candidates, an official said on Sunday. Videos from Chinese content farms produced under the instruction of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aim to vilify Taiwan’s conscription policy and create a sense that war would be imminent if the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is re-elected, they said.
The Executive Yuan last year rejected calls to ban public use of TikTok, saying there is no legal basis for doing so. In the US, several states have banned government agencies, and their employees and contractors, from using TikTok on government-issued devices. However, in the US there is also no legal basis for banning civilians from using TikTok or any other platform on their personal devices. China is aware of such legal limitations, and it uses free speech and other democratic freedoms against the countries that protect those freedoms. Meanwhile, Chinese social media companies are free to operate unrestricted in democracies, openly facilitating China’s cognitive warfare efforts.
Exacerbating the situation is the tendency of the CCP to insert itself in discourse on China-related concerns by infiltrating university campuses, paying off politicians and using fake accounts on social media. The situation leaves governments scrambling to find ways to prevent China from exporting its dystopian ideology. Governments must find ways to combat disinformation and mitigate efforts to influence young voters without treading on press and speech freedoms. The best option is empowering the public through media literacy campaigns. Courses that teach young students to identify potential disinformation and how to verify the authenticity of questionable information should be a required part of school curricula.
However, artificial intelligence (AI) is making it harder to distinguish real news sources from disinformation. A recent CNN report said Chinese content farms are using AI to make deepfake videos, including a recent one that depicts Vice President William Lai (賴清德), the DPP’s presidential candidate, making comments favorable toward China. To fight this trend, national security officials might need to use AI to defend against the technology. For example, the government could employ AI-powered fact-checking at the Internet service provider level. Content suspected of containing disinformation could be flagged for fact-checking by an independent body and confirmed disinformation could be watermarked with a warning before it reaches users.
Another aim of China’s cognitive warfare efforts has been to foster pro-China sentiment among young Taiwanese, partly by inviting students to China to attend exchange events. While this might not seem inherently worrisome, the issue is that China regularly detains foreigners including Taiwanese. There has been a growing number of reports over the past year of students, professors and researchers being arbitrarily detained upon entering China, and in some cases facing arrest over past comments or actions seen as supporting Taiwanese independence.
Taiwanese who are lured by a false sense that visiting China is safe are at great risk, particularly because there are no channels through which Taiwan can provide assistance to citizens who find themselves detained in China. The channels that did exist through the Straits Exchange Foundation and the Mainland Affairs Council have broken down, because the CCP hopes to pressure voters into electing pro-China opposition candidates.
With the presidential and legislative elections just around the corner, the government must ensure it is on top of efforts to combat Chinese disinformation and influence campaigns. Pro-China forces in Taiwan that collaborate on Chinese efforts will add to the challenge, but authorities must remain vigilant, and work to counter them.
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