Scam cases and related financial losses plummeted 72 percent and 66 percent respectively eight months after Taiwan banned the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書, also known as RedNote), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday.
MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) made the comments at a routine news conference a day after China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) accused Taiwan of using the ban to sow cross-strait division.
TAO spokesman Zhang Han (張晗) told a news conference in Beijing that the Democratic Progressive Party-controlled government cut off access to Xiaohongshu to stoke hostility and confrontation across the Taiwan Strait.
Photo: AFP
Blocking the platform is a violation of people’s right to freely use the Internet, he said.
The Executive Yuan’s anti-fraud command center in December last year blocked access to Xiaohongshu to protect Taiwanese from Internet-based scammers operating from the platform, Liang said.
The platform repeatedly ignored Taiwan’s requests for it to take measures against scammers, prompting the center to impose a temporary ban, Liang said.
Taiwan reported 145 scams involving Xiaohongshu incurring NT$33,877,000 in financial loss between December last year and last month, compared to 525 cases incurring NT$98,902,000 in losses from April to November last year, he said.
The figures demonstrate that Xiaohongshu is a major node for scammers targeting Taiwan, Liang said, adding that the platform could regain its privilege to operate in Taiwan as soon as it complies with the center’s orders.
“Since Xiaohongshu continued to turn a deaf ear to us, the agencies in charge had no choice but to take appropriate actions,” he said.
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