A “new wave of disinformation” is heading across the Strait before the presidential election in January as Taiwan tries to combat China’s ever-shifting and increasingly subtle disinformation tactics, the New York Times reported.
Boasting “a resilience to foreign meddling that could serve as a model to the dozens of other democracies holding votes in 2024,” Taiwan “is ready for the disinformation onslaught” from China, the report said.
Taiwan has “one of the world’s most mature” communities of fact-checkers, government investments, international media literacy partnerships and a public sense of skepticism, it said.
Photo: I-Hwa Cheng, Bloomberg
“The challenge now is sustaining the effort,” it quoted Minister of Digital Affairs Audrey Tang (唐鳳) as saying.
Tang added that Taiwan now needs to “stay agile.”
Beijing’s efforts, such as criticizing Taiwan’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and launching cyberattacks when then-US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last year, “has struggled to sway public opinion,” it said.
Operations including the Taiwan FactCheck Center, Fake News Cleaner, Cofacts, Doublethink Lab and MyGoPen are providing fact-checking to help citizens ward off Beijing’s disinformation campaign, it said.
Many Taiwanese have developed internal “warning bells” for suspicious narratives, Fake News Cleaner cofounder Melody Hsieh (謝呈釀) said.
However, some fact-checkers and watchdog groups warned against “public apathy” towards fact-checking, the resources of which were not widely used in past elections, it said.
In addition, posts originating from China “appear increasingly subtle and organic, rather than flooding the zone with obvious pro-Beijing messages.”
Content farms under Beijing’s control might create false information, which would then be spread by agents, bots or unwitting social media users, it said.
Other tactics used by Beijing include buying established Taiwanese social media accounts and paying Taiwanese influencers to promote pro-China narratives, the report cited research from the RAND Corp as saying.
The Chinese disinformation campaign also shifted its focus from the relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait to Taiwan’s domestic issues to provoke social division, such as “spreading lies about local services and health issues,” it said.
In comparison to the last presidential election in 2020, Beijing is “no longer distracted by pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong” and can take better advantage of artificial intelligence, such as creating deep fake videos or images, it said.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) previously said that cracking down on disinformation is one of the “most difficult challenges for democracies” and requires “a whole-of-society effort.”
ANOTHER EMERGES: The CWA yesterday said this year’s fourth storm of the typhoon season had formed in the South China Sea, but was not expected to affect Taiwan Tropical Storm Gaemi has intensified slightly as it heads toward Taiwan, where it is expected to affect the country in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 8am yesterday, the 120km-radius storm was 800km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip, moving at 9kph northwest, the agency said. A sea warning for Gaemi could be issued tonight at the earliest, it said, adding that the storm is projected to be closest to Taiwan on Wednesday or Thursday. Gaemi’s potential effect on Taiwan remains unclear, as that would depend on its direction, radius and intensity, forecasters said. Former Weather Forecast
As COVID-19 cases in Japan have been increasing for 10 consecutive weeks, people should get vaccinated before visiting the nation, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. The centers reported 773 hospitalizations and 124 deaths related to COVID-19 in Taiwan last week. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Director Guo Hung-wei (郭宏偉) on Tuesday said the number of weekly COVID-19 cases reported in Japan has been increasing since mid-May and surpassed 55,000 cases from July 8 to July 14. The average number of COVID-19 patients at Japan’s healthcare facilities that week was also 1.39 times that of the week before and KP.3 is the dominant
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) working group for Taiwan-related policies is likely to be upgraded to a committee-level body, a report commissioned by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. As Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is increasingly likely to upgrade the CCP’s Central Leading Group for Taiwan Affairs, Taiwanese authorities should prepare by researching Xi and the CCP, the report said. At the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the CCP, which ended on Thursday last week, the party set a target of 2029 for the completion of some tasks, meaning that Xi is likely preparing to
US-CHINA TRADE DISPUTE: Despite Beijing’s offer of preferential treatment, the lure of China has dimmed as Taiwanese and international investors move out Japan and the US have become the favored destinations for Taiwanese graduates as China’s attraction has waned over the years, the Ministry of Labor said. According to the ministry’s latest income and employment advisory published this month, 3,215 Taiwanese university graduates from the class of 2020 went to Japan, surpassing for the first time the 2,881 graduates who went to China. A total of 2,300 graduates from the class of 2021 went to the US, compared with the 2,262 who went to China, the document showed. The trend continued for the class of 2023, of whom 1,460 went to Japan, 1,334 went to