Beijing could be using Douyin and TikTok (international) to sow distrust in the government and elections among young Taiwanese, experts said.
Short-form video-sharing platforms are the easiest way to influence the views of young Taiwanese, said a source familiar with cross-strait issues, commenting on the condition of anonymity.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has repeatedly used Douyin to drum up support for specific presidential candidates leading up to Saturday’s election, the source said, adding that chronic use of Douyin could cause users to develop pro-China views.
Photo: AP
Douyin has shown that it can influence the decisions and perceptions of young people, Taiwan Thinktank researcher Wu Se-chih (吳瑟致) said.
Videos alleging that the Central Election Commission had engaged in ballot-rigging are trying to sow doubt in the government and, eventually, society as a whole, Wu said.
Such tactics aim to create conflict, heighten social turmoil and eventually give cause for the CCP to intervene, he said.
Young people have shown little responsibility in sharing questionable Douyin videos, a trend that should be closely monitored, he said.
National Chengchi University political science professor Hung Ching-fu (洪敬富) said that the CCP could be behind the videos claiming that ballot-rigging occurred.
Once people begin to doubt democracy, it would in the long term create discord, Hung said.
Dismissing Taiwan’s democracy as “worthless” would further prop up the legitimacy of China’s autocratic rule, he added.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) called for measures to regulate Douyin, and potentially ban it.
Douyin, as a Chinese company, carries inherent security risks, and videos hosted on the platform are being used to spread misinformation, Wang said.
Users are unable to get a complete story on issues presented in videos due to length restrictions on Douyin, he said.
The issue should be a concern for all political parties, he said, urging lawmakers to work together to draft legislation to control Douyin, and, if the app proves to be uncontrollable, to ban it.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS