Frequent TikTok users in Taiwan are more likely to hold certain political views aligned with Beijing’s narratives, according to a recent survey by Taiwan-based NGO DoubleThink Lab.
Conducted in March and released on June 5, the survey compared "active" TikTok users - defined as those who use the app several times a week for over 30 minutes per session or several times a day with shorter sessions - with "inactive" users who spend less time on the platform. It explored their views on a range of issues including cross-strait relations, democracy and U.S. support for Taiwan.
All respondents affiliated with Taiwan’s three main parties - the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party - mostly disagreed with the statement: "For the sake of cross-strait peace, it is okay to give up the democratic system."
Photo: Reuters
However, only 73.1 percent of active DPP supporters disagreed, compared with 83.4 percent of inactive users.
In response to another statement: "The DPP is no different from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that Taiwan lacks freedom of speech" - 23.9 percent of active DPP users agreed, compared with just 9.3 percent of inactive users.
Eric Hsu (徐葆權) of DoubleThink Lab said that the findings show that frequent TikTok users, regardless of political affiliation, are more likely to hold pro-China views and be skeptical of Taiwan’s political system.
The survey also asked respondents whether they agreed that cross-strait unification would "not significantly change ordinary people’s lives." Among active TikTok users, 45.2 percent agreed, higher than the 33.2 percent of inactive users.
DoubleThink Lab said in its analysis that because TikTok delivers entertainment and political content side by side, it could influence users’ views on certain issues and their receptiveness to specific political narratives.
Hsu said the survey was carried out amid concerns about TikTok’s security risks and China’s "united front" efforts - a coordinated campaign by the CCP to influence politics abroad and suppress opposition.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese tech firm widely seen as operating under CCP oversight.
Since 2019, Taiwan has banned TikTok, Douyin (抖音) - the Chinese-language version - and China’s social media app Xiaohongshu (小紅書), or Rednote, from government devices and official premises over national security concerns.
According to data from Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s top academic research institution, over 50 percent of high school students and younger use TikTok or Douyin, Hsu said.
The survey gathered 2,612 valid online responses, including 1,097 active users and 1,515 inactive users.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
RSS