China’s intervention in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) chairperson election could prove the necessary catalyst for genial collaboration between the ruling and opposition parties to protect against Chinese-sourced fake information campaigns, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said.
Chiu made the remarks in an interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) published yesterday.
The KMT’s chairperson election is to take place today. Over the past weeks, several candidates in the KMT leadership race have said that China has been meddling in the election campaign.
Photo: Huang Chun-hsuan, Taipei Times
Chiu in the interview urged a consensus between the ruling and opposition parties to implement legislation to effectively combat disinformation from China and prevent it from endangering Taiwan’s democratic way of life.
China’s “united front” tactics are very flexible, Chiu said, citing how it previously played the KMT against the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and is now creating similar distinctions within the KMT by potentially supporting specific candidates and attacking others.
The creation of China-friendly, pro-local, pro-unification and pro-democracy factions within the KMT is a classic divide-and-conquer tactic employed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), he said.
In past elections, a torrent of information or controversies originating in China has sought to change the Taiwanese public’s perceptions and sway their voting, and such fake information has often led to conflict within Taiwan and affected its democracy, Chiu said, adding that the government must take the lead in exposing such acts.
“It is very good” the KMT is now calling for measures to bolster democracy, as any effort to amend the National Security Act (國安法) and the Anti-infiltration Act (反滲透法) and shore up Taiwan’s legislation regarding the prevention of foreign infiltration or intervention in the nation should be bipartisan instead of unilateral, he said.
Chiu urged the ruling and opposition parties to work together to deter the flood of Chinese “united front” rhetoric against Taiwan via fake messages and deepfake videos distributed through dummy social media accounts.
Democratic Taiwan’s open access to information makes it more vulnerable to being manipulated by artificial intelligence-generated fake news and deepfake videos on the Internet, while authoritarian China’s centrally controlled access to the Internet and distribution of news means its people are less affected, he said.
China spends very little on spreading false information, while Taiwan spends much more to expose, investigate and verify it, he said.
Chiu suggested that Internet platforms, such as Google, Meta and Line, should take responsibility for combating fake news.
Chiu also said that Taiwan must step up efforts to implement programs to increase media and information literacy so that the public would not be misled when reading about cross-strait news.
Meanwhile, on Hong Kong political analyst Willy Lam’s (林和立) claims that Chinese infiltration of Taiwan is so complete that the “CCP’s united front work organizations can issue direct orders to major KMT lawmakers,” Chiu in the interview said that the MAC leans toward disbelief, but said that the MAC cannot speak for Lam or the KMT.
We believe that anyone who was born and raised here, and has loyalty to the country and its people, and loves the land, would not take orders from Beijing, Chiu said.
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