On April 24, US President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. The law, which was overwhelmingly approved by the US Congress, requires the popular video-sharing app TikTok to divest from its parent company, China-based ByteDance, or face a ban in the US. The legislation highlights a dilemma faced by democratic countries, including Taiwan, that pits free speech against national security interests.
The US ultimatum is meant to address national security concerns that, according to China’s National Security Law and National Intelligence Law, obligates Chinese individuals and organizations to support national intelligence work, allowing the Chinese government access to more than 170 million US users’ data or the ability to spread propaganda.
FBI Director Christopher Wray has confirmed that TikTok’s parent company is “beholden to the Chinese government,” and some TikTok employees have revealed that its Chinese executives, instead of TikTok international leadership, are making key decisions, despite its claims of independence.
In 2020, then-US president Donald Trump issued an executive order to force TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell the app, but Beijing responded by slapping curbs on data-analysis related technology exports, aiming to block a full sale of TikToK by requiring ByteDance to undergo a Chinese government-reviewed licensing procedure.
This time, as expected, ByteDance filed a legal challenge to the new US law, saying that it contravenes the country’s first amendment, setting up what likely will be a prolonged court battle centering on the conflict between national security and freedom of speech.
The ByteDance app’s threat to democratic nations’ security not only concerns the US: India in 2020 banned TikTok and a slew of Chinese apps, followed by Iran, Nepal and Somalia. Canada, the UK, Australia and the European Parliament have restricted the use of TikTok in government agencies.
In Taiwan, which has been listed as the country most targeted by disinformation and cyberattacks originating from China for 11 consecutive years in a report by the global research project Varieties of Democracy, government employees have been prohibited from using Chinese social media platforms, such as TikTok and its domestic Chinese version, Douyin (抖音), since 2019.
Although TikTok and Douyin have been officially classified as “dangerous products” controlled by foreign adversaries that could pose a threat to national security, the Executive Yuan has been at its wits’ end in trying to restrict their public use due to a lack of solid legal basis. A ban on those apps surely would also be decried by opposition parties.
While there are an estimated 5 million TikTok users in Taiwan, with 57 percent under the age of 40, a growing number of civil groups and cybersecurity experts are urging a restriction on its usage.
Some lawmakers recently proposed a legislative amendment to empower the authorities to ask digital stores and platforms to issue warnings about or remove harmful apps that pose possible information security risks. The government should put more effort into collecting facts showing the detrimental effect of Chinese apps on democracy, with a view to accelerating legislation and promoting public vigilance regarding manipulated messages from China-controlled media.
Chinese apps could be tools to collect users’ and their associates’ personal data, which would be used to trap those while traveling to China. Several Taiwanese scholars have been detained and questioned in China. These applications manipulated by China in fact have turned out to be a stranglehold on the freedom of speech.
They did it again. For the whole world to see: an image of a Taiwan flag crushed by an industrial press, and the horrifying warning that “it’s closer than you think.” All with the seal of authenticity that only a reputable international media outlet can give. The Economist turned what looks like a pastiche of a poster for a grim horror movie into a truth everyone can digest, accept, and use to support exactly the opinion China wants you to have: It is over and done, Taiwan is doomed. Four years after inaccurately naming Taiwan the most dangerous place on
Wherever one looks, the United States is ceding ground to China. From foreign aid to foreign trade, and from reorganizations to organizational guidance, the Trump administration has embarked on a stunning effort to hobble itself in grappling with what his own secretary of state calls “the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted.” The problems start at the Department of State. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has asserted that “it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power” and that the world has returned to multipolarity, with “multi-great powers in different parts of the
President William Lai (賴清德) recently attended an event in Taipei marking the end of World War II in Europe, emphasizing in his speech: “Using force to invade another country is an unjust act and will ultimately fail.” In just a few words, he captured the core values of the postwar international order and reminded us again: History is not just for reflection, but serves as a warning for the present. From a broad historical perspective, his statement carries weight. For centuries, international relations operated under the law of the jungle — where the strong dominated and the weak were constrained. That
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
RSS