The government is documenting its experiences with China’s alleged attempts to interfere in elections next week and is to publish its analysis soon after the vote, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said on Wednesday.
The government has pointed to military and economic pressure, as well as Chinese-subsidized trips to China for local Taiwanese officials, as evidence of Beijing’s interference ahead of the presidential and legislative elections on Saturday next week.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) has called the elections “purely an internal Chinese matter” and that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is trying to call any kind of interactions between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait election interference.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
“The Chinese regime has made no bones about the purpose of its military coercion and trade manipulation. The message is clear: Taiwan’s voters must reject the ruling Democratic Progressive Party ticket of [Vice President William] Lai (賴清德) and Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), or else,” Wu wrote in the latest issue of The Economist. “The bluntness of the language shows that the government in Beijing is not afraid of being seen as a player in Taiwan’s national elections.”
Beijing is attempting to convince a minority of swing voters by “taking advantage of Taiwan’s openness,” flooding voters with disinformation and inviting grassroots officials on China tours, he wrote.
“In a tight race like this one, and with the concerted effort the PRC [People’s Republic of China] is making, it might just get its way,” he wrote.
However, Wu said that Taiwan is taking measures to counter this interference and is documenting its experiences, with analysis to be published shortly after the elections “in consultation with international experts.”
“Should China succeed in shaping the outcome of voting in Taiwan, it will apply the same tactics to other democracies to promote its preferred international order,” Wu wrote. “Democratic countries should never let this happen.”
He urged the international community to pay more attention to China’s efforts to undermine Taiwan’s democracy through influence and disinformation campaigns, as well as hybrid warfare, including cyberattacks — especially as Taiwan’s elections are just one of more than 40 to take place this year.
“Our desire is to turn Taiwan’s experience into a positive contribution to the rules-based international order, thereby helping the free world’s fight against authoritarian powers bent on eroding democratic systems,” Wu wrote. “It is our belief that democracy will prevail.”
Yesterday, the TAO in a statement responding to DPP accusations of election interference said that such attacks were the DPP’s “usual trick” in elections to shift the focus of attention away from the party’s own problems.
“These dirty and lame tricks are used too much, and they will only make themselves become a laughingstock,” it said.
Additional reporting by Kayleigh Madjar
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS