During an impromptu Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) rally on Tuesday last week to protest what the party called the unfairness of the judicial system, a young TPP supporter said that if Taiwan goes to war, he would “surrender to the [Chinese] People’s Liberation Army [PLA] with unyielding determination.”
The rally was held after former Taipei deputy mayor Pong Cheng-sheng’s (彭振聲) wife took her life prior to Pong’s appearance in court to testify in the Core Pacific corruption case involving former Taipei mayor and TPP chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲).
The TPP supporter said President William Lai (賴清德) was leading them to die on the battlefield, which is why he would surrender to the PLA if a war started.
Many political pundits and influencers have criticized the TPP and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for using the death of Pong’s wife to incite hatred against the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government and sow distrust in the judicial system. The two parties claim that the DPP is manipulating the system to persecute opposition parties.
It is understandable that the TPP and the KMT would seize any opportunity to attack Lai and the government. It is in line with the TPP’s pledge to defend Ko’s “innocence,” and its urgent need to rally supporters to “stand up” against the DPP government and save KMT legislators from being recalled, to maintain their majority alliance in the legislature.
However, it is concerning if the young TPP supporter’s “surrender” remark was not merely an impulsive notion, but a genuine decision he has made, or that is perhaps even shared with other young TPP “little grass” supporters.
That is possible, as most “little grasses” are people who agree with Ko’s claim that politics, the KMT and DPP are corrupt, and believe that only they could make a change. However, Ko often had an ambiguous stance on issues, which earned him the label of a “political chameleon” for his changing stances, while “little grasses” were often called “nihilists.”
Together with China’s increasing hybrid warfare against Taiwan — including military intimidation, disinformation campaigns and psychological operations — the young man’s defeatist attitude and “surrender” remark is all the more chilling, as it is the purpose of China’s cognitive warfare: demoralization.
In 1984, alleged former KGB agent and journalist Yuri Bezmenov, who later defected to the West, said that Russia planned to defeat the US through “ideological subversion.” The goal was to change people’s perception of reality to the extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of protecting themselves, their families, community and country. The first stage was “demoralization.”
It is evident that China is exploiting democracies’ freedom of information and speech, and the Internet to conduct its cognitive warfare and demoralize Taiwanese. With its consistent spreading of false or misleading information, people might become numb or find it difficult to discern the truth and slowly disengage from important issues, making them more susceptible to manipulation.
Moreover, young people’s exposure to a filtered image of China through social media might lead them to distrust Taiwan’s supposedly “chaotic” democratic system and instead embrace China’s “simple” content, forgetting its censored nature.
While the real belief behind the TPP supporter’s “surrender” remark remains unclear, it should be seen as a warning sign of China’s cognitive warfare and its influence. These efforts might no longer be to simply make Taiwanese more fond of China, but a tool to demoralize, breed apathy and erode critical thinking so Taiwanese would not collectively address challenges or defend themselves against threats.
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