With just a few days until its globally significant presidential election, Taiwan has been hit by what experts say are acts of interference by the Chinese government.
The election is expected to be one of the closest in decades. It comes at a time of extreme cross-strait tensions between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China – Taiwan’s formal name.
Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, said on Tuesday that China had launched interference efforts at every election since Taiwan democratised. “This time their aims remain the same – to influence a critical minority in a tight race, and I would categorise this as a tight race,” he said.
Beijing wants the ruling Democratic Progressive party (DPP), which it has labelled separatists, to be voted out in favour of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), even though the KMT is also opposed to Chinese annexation. It has framed KMT as a choice of “peace over war”. But as well as direct statements, Beijing is also targeting Taiwan’s voting public via more subversive means.
Beijing has a long history of targeting Taiwan with cyberwarfare, disinformation, and other influence operations, ramping up efforts around election times. For the last 10 years Taiwan has been the largest recipient of foreign-created disinformation, according to monitoring groups. On Tuesday the DPP’s presidential candidate, Lai Ching-te, said China was engaging in “unprecedented” levels of interference.
“In addition to political and military pressure, it is also using economic means, cognitive warfare, disinformation, threats and incentives,” Lai told reporters.
“It has resorted to all means to interfere with this election.”
Deep fakes, influence operations and disinformation
Taiwan has accused Beijing of new acts of economic coercion, by announcing the end of tariff cuts on some chemical imports. Chen Binhua, the spokesperson for China’s Taiwan affairs office, directly linked the decision to the DPP continuing to “stubbornly adhere to their Taiwan independence position, and refus[ing] to repent”.
Under anti-infiltration laws Taiwan authorities are prosecuting almost 200 Taiwanese local leaders who were invited to travel to China, suspecting the trips were an influence operation designed to increase votes for pro-Beijing candidates. The Guardian sought to speak to the travellers, but those reached declined to comment. An independent candidate has also been detained by authorities for allegedly accepting cryptocurrency from China.
Last month Reuters reported that Chinese authorities had threatened a hugely popular band from Taiwan, Mayday, with a fine for lip-syncing, after they declined to make pro-Beijing comments. Lip-syncing is banned in China.
Then in November, a video appeared of the DPP’s Lai saying the opposition represented the majority view in Taiwan, but the Taiwan FactCheck Center said it appeared to be a deep fake manipulation.
There is also a large amount of online content pushing conspiracy theories about the DPP and figures including the current president, Tsai Ing-wen, and Lai, fake news about the US and Taiwan co-developing biolabs to target Chinese people, and stoking racial tensions around migrant workers. Fake polls putting the KMT candidate ahead of the DPP have also been published in local media.
Election disinformation has amplified furores over egg shortages, Taiwan’s submarine production, political and sex scandals, and Taiwan’s readiness for war, fuelling fears over conscription and young people being forced to fight, as well as casting doubt over the US’s support. Authorities have also warned the public about “electoral misinformation” including claims of video surveillance inside voting booths, and hidden ballot boxes.
Not all acts of interference have been directly linked to Chinese authorities or related actors, and Beijing has rejected the accusations. Its defence ministry has accused Taiwan’s government of “hyping up” the military threat to “stoke confrontation and manipulate the election”.
“In this election China uses an argument of choosing between peace over war, trying to establish a pro-China government,” Lai said on Tuesday.
“But the people of Taiwan have realised this and will use their sacred vote to carry out democracy, because otherwise … it won’t be a presidential election, it will be for an election for a provincial head, like Hong Kong.”
A change in tactics
Tim Niven, the lead researcher at Taiwan-based online monitoring NGO Doublethink Lab, said the disinformation took advantage of Taiwan’s already very politically polarised society and drew on legitimate issues that people already cared about.
“We suspect these amplification efforts are putting the polarisation of Taiwan on steroids,” he said.
But Doublethink Lab had also noticed a change in tactics, away from newly created content and towards amplification of pro-China material produced in Taiwan. Niven said it had identified more than 800 “inauthentic” Facebook assets all amplifying one TikTok account, and had infiltrated Facebook groups with about 8,000 members but who had little real-world engagement.
“The content is really just cutting up these Taiwanese talkshows and pro-China influencers, relying on local voices who are obviously going to be more compelling for Taiwanese audiences than PRC actors,” said Niven.
“It also avoids diplomatic attribution to the PRC, although we do see that as well.”
But while Beijing appears to be putting a huge effort into influencing the election, the pressure from military activity that has been growing in recent years has gone quiet. Analysts have speculated that Beijing recognises its overt aggression – such as the near daily incursions into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone (Adiz), live fire exercises, and drills practising an assault on the presidential office in Taipei – is potentially counterproductive. Such activity appears to bolster the DPP’s position that Taiwan must defend itself from worsening threats.
A Guardian analysis of defence ministry data shows a drop in Adiz incursions in recent months, with few days of more than 10 aircraft since early November. But at the same time, Taiwan has faced an apparently new phenomena.
‘This reads to me as a concerted attempt at electoral interference’
Since early December the defence ministry has reported more than 25 Chinese balloons have flown through the Adiz, with several going over the main island through Taiwan’s sovereign airspace.
How new this activity is, and whether it is a direct act of election-related intimidation, is not entirely clear, analysts said. Taiwan’s defence ministry has said they are weather balloons, tracked heading east from China’s mainland before disappearing.
The ministry has a history of releasing selective and inconsistent information, and declined to answer further questions. Balloons have been detected around Taiwan before but analysts said the flights into the sovereign airspace were a potential concern, and put Taipei in a tricky position.
“This reads to me as a concerted attempt at electoral interference from Beijing meant to trap President Tsai’s government in a quagmire where they should act to protect Taiwan’s sovereignty but can’t risk alienating voters if China claims they are ‘escalating tensions’”, said Ben Lewis, an independent military analyst.
Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew school of public policy, said the Tsai administration was “trying not to overhype” them, noting the furore after the US shot down what it said was a Chinese spy balloon in its airspace last February.
“It’s hard for me to understand why this isn’t being treated as a gross violation of sovereignty,” Thompson said.
He said it was not clear what the intentions behind the balloon flights were, “until China starts stating who owns them, controls them, launched them, and what their intended purpose is”.
“Is this really cognitive warfare on China’s part? They’re not the ones announcing the balloons. If Taiwan’s government wasn’t announcing them it wouldn’t be a very effective campaign on China’s part if no one knew they were there,” he said.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry says it has been monitoring China’s efforts and will publish its analysis next week. “We don’t know whether it works or not but our study is continuing,” Wu said on Tuesday.
“We are keeping our eyes open.”
Additional reporting by Chi Hui Lin
