The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) “cannot escape blame” after Lin Wei-feng (林瑋豐), a political commentator, was found to have used his own anonymous posts as evidence that China was conducting cognitive warfare, opposition parties said yesterday.
Lin on Monday apologized on Facebook after reports said that he operated an account on the Professional Technology Temple (PTT) online bulletin board, posting content that appeared to support the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Lin on Monday posted on PTT’s gossip board using the bj26bj account, writing that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Line account is fake and calling for its “destruction,” reports said.
Photo courtesy of the KMT caucus
He posted screenshots of his own posts on Facebook, presenting them as evidence of Chinese cognitive warfare, reports said, adding that DPP Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) shared the Facebook post.
In his apology, Lin said that he has long participated in a “culture” of using different personas to debate politics online, a practice he has found “entertaining.”
The reports drew a heated response from opposition parties.
After the threat of Chinese manipulation during the 2018 local elections, the government passed laws against false news reports, the New Power Party (NPP) wrote on Facebook.
However, it seems that the threat is not only from Beijing, but also from the ruling party, the NPP wrote.
Lin attacked the government and supported the CCP, then used that activity to implicate Beijing, while DPP leaders used the PTT posts to call for an investigation, the NPP wrote.
Lin’s division of labor is clear and his excuse that he was just having fun has no merit, it wrote.
The NPP has itself experienced anonymous attacks indicative of the degradation of the nation’s online democratic environment, it wrote, adding that political parties that employ manipulative actions behind the scenes “cannot escape blame” and would be spurned by Taiwanese if they try to crush public opinion with manufactured debate.
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) called on the DPP to tell the public how long it has been engaged in cognitive warfare.
Even President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) shared false information that Lin posted on Facebook, creating a major national security risk, TPP spokesman Tsai Chun-wei (蔡峻維) said, referring to a post on the president’s page urging people to “avoid being misled” and to not delete the CDC account.
The DPP says the nation must take precautions against cognitive warfare, yet it is leading the charge, Tsai Chun-wei said.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said that the “ugliness of the DPP’s cyberarmy has fully manifested itself.”
It is sad that rather than fighting COVID-19, the DPP is fighting people’s perceptions, KMT caucus secretary-general Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said.
The DPP has a close relationship with Lin and has long used such tactics, Cheng said, calling on the president, who is DPP chairperson, to publicly apologize.
The DPP distanced itself from Lin and called attempts to link online comments to it “absurd.”
Although Taiwan is a democracy with freedom of speech, people must take responsibility for their actions, DPP spokeswoman Yen Juo-fang (顏若芳) said.
Lin does not work for the DPP, nor has he been hired by the party, Yen said.
Repeated attempts by the KMT to link the DPP to the comments of individual personalities online are “absurd and out of focus,” she said.
Additional reporting by Chen Yun, Lin, Liang-sheng and Yang Chun-hui
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS