Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan.
The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year.
The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment.
Photo: AFP
“Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on social media.
Employing an expression from China about use of virtual private networks to skirt the country’s pervasive online censorship, Cheng said banning the app was a major restriction of Internet freedom.
This “only makes us lament that Taiwan’s long-prized Internet freedom and freedom of speech have already been restricted and strangled by the Democratic Progressive Party in the name of national security,” Cheng added.
Xiaohongshu saw a surge of US users in January as expectations grew that the similarly
Chinese-owned app TikTok could be banned, a risk averted by a divestiture plan.
Taiwan has repeatedly warned people of the dangers of using Chinese apps, mostly due to the risk of disinformation from Beijing.
The ministry said it did not get a response from Xiaohongshu when the government contacted it asking for concrete measures to ensure data safety.
Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) yesterday said the ministry had offered a prompt explanation about the fraud and security risks.
“We respect the ministry’s decision and express our support,” she told reporters.
Later yesterday, the Executive Yuan said it supports regulatory measures to prevent fraud.
Xiaohongshu failed to cooperate with investigations and improve its practices, and is outside Taiwan’s jurisdiction, making investigation difficult, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) said through a media group.
Article 42 of the amended Fraud Crime Hazard Prevention Act (詐欺犯罪危害防制條例) allows authorities to “order Internet access service providers to suspend analysis or restrict access when they consider it necessary,” she added.
Taiwan has complained that China has targeted Taiwanese to spread disinformation and undermine public trust by using Western social media it has banned domestically.
In October, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office launched a Facebook page using traditional Chinese characters.
It was quickly spammed by Internet users who posted Taiwanese flags and poked fun at China’s official censorship.
Additional reporting by Kayleigh Madjar
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