False information on the Internet that casts doubt on Taiwan-US relations is affecting local support for the government’s diplomatic policy and allies of the government, an Information Operations Research Group (IORG) report said.
The report was in particular referring to President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) now-confirmed meeting with US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Los Angeles today.
Compared with the visit by then-US House speaker Nancy Pelosi in August last year, the McCarthy visit has garnered less attention online, especially on the Sina Weibo platform, with the topic only spiking in February when he was elected, said the report, which was released on Thursday last week.
That was definite sign that Beijing intentionally kept a possible McCarthy visit to Taiwan from appearing on the platform, the report said.
From August last year through February, the IORG database collected 112 million articles, 8,000 of which mentioned McCarthy, as the media cycle was at the time reporting on the possibility of him visiting Taiwan, it said.
The report noted that there were four categories of false information: “source of antagonism,” “abandonment,” “false friends” and “US-Taiwan collusion.”
Information in the first category suggests that the US is instigating trouble in the region, that the US is treating Taiwan as nothing but a chess piece or that Taiwan risks becoming an “Asian Ukraine,” it said.
In the “abandonment” category, the IORG included reports claiming that the US would sacrifice Taiwan for its own political benefit, or that pro-US sentiment would only lead to the outbreak of war.
Under the “false friends” category were reports that the Republican Party is using the Taiwan issue to build support for the US presidential election next year.
The “working together” category includes reports suggesting that the Democratic Progressive Party is working with, or agreeing, to let the US create a “protection racket,” or that the party is colluding with the US without paying attention to the risk of war.
The articles aim to smear the US, criticizing it for having alleged ulterior motives for sustaining Taiwan-US relations, but most of the false information is a Beijing-embellished regurgitation of previous reports on Taiwan, the report said.
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