The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) should support proposed amendments to national security laws if it believes foreign forces are attempting to interfere with elections in Taiwan, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus said yesterday.
The call came in the wake of allegations by senior KMT member and media personality Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), who said that the KMT chairperson election has been the subject of an “overwhelming wave of Chinese intervention” targeting one of the candidates, former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌).
Another candidate, Sun Yat-sen School president Chang Ya-chung (張亞中), also said that throughout the campaign, multiple artificial intelligence (AI)-generated short videos and spurious statistics have been disseminated to attack the candidates, including himself.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
DPP caucus secretary-general Chen Pei-yu (陳培瑜) said that national security bills proposed by the DPP caucus since the new legislative term began in February last year have been blocked by the opposition 632 times.
“This week, all KMT chairperson candidates and their supporters suddenly realized that “online disinformation is real, and foreign interference in Taiwanese elections is real,” she said. “Now that they recognize how much such actions harm Taiwan’s democracy and freedom, they should support proposals to amend national security laws.”
Calling out KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), DPP caucus chief executive Chung Chia-pin (鍾佳濱) said: “The Chinese Communist Party’s interference in Taiwan’s democratic parties is a collective threat. Both the ruling and opposition parties should respond together, regardless of political affiliation.”
On Sunday, activist organization Taiwan Economic Democracy Union convener Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) urged political parties to work together to amend the Anti-Infiltration Act (反滲透法) to combat a surge in disinformation campaigns.
“The KMT has tasted the bitter fruit of online attacks made by foreign hostile forces through fake news and AI-generated videos. We hope it recognizes the severity of the problem and takes action to help stop Chinese interference in Taiwanese politics. It is time to fix the Anti-Infiltration Act,” he said.
The act bans the dissemination of false public polls or fake news to influence elections or interfere in a political party’s primaries or nomination systems, Lai said.
“However, there are no additional severe penalties if China or any foreign hostile force were to interfere in our political parties’ elections, including for chairperson, central standing committee members and the like,” he said. “The ruling and opposition parties should together review and close the loopholes in the Anti-Infiltration Act.”
Taiwan Statebuilding Party (TSP) Chairman Wang Hsing-huan (王興煥) on Sunday said that one effective way to combat disinformation is to cut off the source of funding to sever their connections to channel their money to agents and proxies in Taiwan.
When the money flow dries up, these agents and proxies would no longer be able to create content, produce videos and circulate disinformation on social media, he said.
The TSP has long urged legislators to pass the “foreign influence transparency act,” he said.
“Only by comprehensively monitoring the money flows of Chinese-affiliated organizations in Taiwan can we immediately monitor unidentified financial flows and pre-emptively block them and shut them down,” Wang said.
“We can then halt these activities, stop the infiltration and deter their recruiting efforts in Taiwan, he said.
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