The Ministry of National Defense yesterday said that it is combating Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cognitive warfare efforts against Taiwan.
The ministry said it has submitted guidelines to the Legislative Yuan to define cognitive warfare efforts by foreign powers and to outline the military’s actions to combat it.
China’s use of social media and other platforms to spread disinformation and cause social unrest in Taiwan has been increasing, it said.
Photo: EPA-EFE / the Ministry of National Defense
The CCP engages in cognitive warfare with Taiwan through the use of propaganda, fake social media accounts, content farms and Taiwanese collaborators, it said.
The military traces misinformation shared through social media in Taiwan, and posts corrected information on its own social media accounts and Web sites, the ministry said, adding that it also posts the corrected information in replies to public posts where possible.
Meanwhile, a defense researcher on Saturday said that the military must continue to improve its asymmetric combat and electronic warfare capabilities to meet the threat of a Chinese invasion attempt.
Institute for National Defense and Security Research senior analyst Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) was responding to an investigative report titled “T-Day: The Battle for Taiwan,” published by Reuters on Friday.
The possible scenarios regarding a Chinese attack discussed in the report have all been previously discussed between the ministry and US officials at the Pentagon, he said.
The article described six scenarios, including a Chinese blockade of Lienchiang County, an invasion of Kinmen County, a customs quarantine, a full blockade, an air and missile campaign, and an all-out invasion of Taiwan.
In each of the scenarios, China’s goal is to force Taipei into unification negotiations, which Taipei refuses in every scenario, instead appealing to the US, Japan and Australia for assistance.
“Reuters has said that Taiwan’s reserve forces are too weak, and this is an area the military is working to strengthen,” he said.
Su cited the report as saying that Taiwan would counter a Chinese attack with missiles, but that the number of missiles it has is limited.
“However, if Taiwan is able to secure Harpoon anti-ship missiles from the US, that would change the situation,” he said.
Citing a statement by Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) in a letter to the Wall Street Journal that was published on Thursday, Su said that “Taiwan is no match for China in resources, manpower or military technologies.”
However, Taiwan has the will and determination to defend itself, so it must speed up investment in its asymmetric warfare capabilities to tip the scales in its favor in the event of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, he said.
“Taiwan should also play to its strengths in information technology, and invest more in its electronic warfare capabilities,” he said. “This is an area that China has been investing in recently, so Taiwan needs to keep pace.”
Su said that an estimated 18 percent of Chinese military planes that have flown near Taiwan’s waters in the past year were electronic warfare aircraft.
This showed that China was seeking to emulate tactics used by the US military, such as the use of its Suter software that allows it to monitor and control enemy air-defense systems, he said.
To counter this, Taiwan must improve the encryption of its wireless communications and develop heterogeneous communications systems, he said.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
UNWAVERING: Paraguay remains steadfast in its support of Taiwan, but is facing growing pressure at home and abroad to switch recognition to Beijing, Pena said Paraguayan President Santiago Pena has pledged to continue enhancing cooperation with Taiwan, as he and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida expressed opposition to any unilateral change to the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait using force, Japanese media reported on Saturday. Kishida yesterday completed a trip to France, Brazil and Paraguay, his first visit to South America since taking office in 2021. After the Japanese leader and Pena spoke for more than an hour on Friday, exchanging views on the situation in East Asia in the face of China’s increasing military pressure on Taiwan, they affirmed that “unilateral attempts to change the