Chapter 4 A Case Study of Taiwan
4.2 The CCP Used Disinformation Interfering Taiwan’s 9-in-1 Election in 2018
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By collecting the news above regarding the influence of CCP on Taiwan, it can be observed from two aspects: external and internal threats. Externally, the CCP had adopted a relatively low-cost military deterrence and matched up with high-level diplomatic, political and economic pressures; internally, the new media and traditional media are used to disseminate controversial information, manipulate Taiwan’s public opinion, and strengthen its penetration in Taiwan society, through its local political agents to conduct a variety of words and deeds to affect the morale of the people in Taiwan also interfere with elections.
The concept of sharp power and the United Front here is the use of aggressive and subversive policies, such as “infiltration”, “bribery” and “co-option” to arouse internal confrontation in Taiwan and manipulate public opinion, create ideological conflict. This strategy not only deviated from the discussion significance of the issue per se but also limits the space for rational discussion or the position of a third party in a democratic system. To sum up, regarding the impact of the CCP’s sharp power and the United Front in Taiwan, the author summarizes the two most discussed issues in the country: (1) the CCP used disinformation interfering Taiwan’s 9-in-1 election in 2018; (2) the CCP used the right to work influencing Taiwan’s public opinion. These two issues are respectively discussed in section 4.2 and 4.3.
4.2 The CCP Used Disinformation Interfering Taiwan’s 9-in-1 Election in 2018
The 9-in-1 local election on November 24, 2018 in Taiwan can be an outbreak of a discussion of China’s sharp power influence. Compared to the winning seats of 13 cities and counties in 2014, the DPP won only 6 counties and cities in the 2018 elections.
International media’s analysis of the DPP’s defeat in this election, including economic
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growth, employment, and annuity reforms, are the key rebuke of this election（外媒：人 民不信任投票，2018）.
However, since the concept of sharp power was proposed, many scholars and watchers have started to pay attention to the fact that China’s infiltration has become more and more serious, specifically the influence of disinformation on politics. Owing to the development of the Internet and technology, the degree of disinformation, misinformation and fake news is getting even worse in the island. Taiwan’s certain news media seems to couple with China’s aggressive foreign propaganda campaign to strengthen the CCP’s United Front strategy against Taiwan. Due to the market integration and conglomeration, Taiwan’s media culture has changed to emphasize that business profits outweigh the public goods.
The right to survival and prosperity of the media seems to have become the priority. Taiwan society is therefore experiencing political polarization.
Before and after the 2018 9-in-1 election period, according to the National Police Agency (NPA), there are 64 reports on disinformation and fake news, 40 cases have issued to the prosecutor, and found the IP address of these false information to be located in the United States, Singapore and China （蘇志宗，2018）. According to the Ministry of the Interior, since January 1 to December 1 of 2019, there are 279 reports on fake news, 191 cases have been detected, 88 cases still under investigation. With the rapid growth of the disinformation cases, Minister of the Mainland Affairs Council, Chen Ming-ton claim that the CCP has attempted to interfere with election results through various means, such as spreading false information via social media, injecting illegal funds or making political purchases（顧荃，2019）. China’s sharp power attack Taiwan is featured with high
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volume of manipulated and fabricated disinformation, which has widely circulated before the 2018 election.
After the 2018 9-in-1 election, December 13, 2018 specifically, six U.S. senators, Catherine Cortez Masto, Marco Rubio, Christopher Coons, Cory Gardner, Michael Bennet and Ted Cruz cosigned a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, and FBI Director Christopher Wray, suggesting that “Allegations such as those surrounding Taiwan’s recent elections must therefore be pursued with seriousness and urgency”. Those alleged interferences including CCP used illegal funds to support pro-Beijing political candidates and political campaigns and disinformation to shape public opinion of political candidates deemed unsympathetic to Beijing’s interests (Josh, 2018; Masto, Rubio, el at., 2018).
National Security Bureau (NSB) also confirm that China has its own cyber force on “self-media”, such as Weibo, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter to launch “cognitive space warfare”
via disinformation.5 NSB found that China has a fixed mode of operation in distributing fake information to Taiwan, that is, select issues such as cross-strait relations, military defense, and Tsai government’s policy, reported first by Chinese state-owned media, like Global Times, 今日海峽, 台海網, later the content was edited by cyber force and 50 cent
party (五毛黨) and spread through social media such as PTT, Facebook, LINE, and YouTube （鍾麗華，2018）.
5 “Cognitive space warfare” also called the “cognitive domain,” is a term used in the psychology of advertising. US think tank Rand Corp describes “cognitive space warfare” as having a number of features, including mass production of information; multiple channels of dissemination; rapid and sustained
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A case of China’s attempt to attack the perception of the information-receiver on DPP via disinformation is, a fake news accusing Wu Shengxiong, a National Policy Consultant of the ROC, who was paid 350,000 NTD per month spreading widely in the Facebook groups among the KMT supporters (such as: 「監督年金改革行動聯盟」、「靠北民進 黨」、「藍色力量」、「中華兒女站起來」). However, according to official website of the Presidential Palace, he was not a consultant but an advisor of the public policy, and it was non-paid position. Investigation found that the article originated from a website named “ 新政聞 ” (http://funnyanecdote.comv), and the style of the entire website is identical to “歡享網” (http://happytify.cc), which is a website involved in the fake news accusation, regarded as “content farms (內容農場)”. Moreover, “歡享網” includes 16 subnets, and its domain are all set up in Alibaba Cloud in China （龔雋幃，2018）. In order to increase the click-through rate (CTR) of the content farms websites, most of the articles only seek to entitle eye-catching titles and do not require the veracity of the information, which become a channel for China to spread false information to Taiwan.
Although such platforms were initially designed to generate advertising revenue, society and the government authority have quickly realized the potential of content farms to manipulate public perceptions. This political propaganda involves a technique called
“repetition”— “convince your opponent (or erode his resistance) through the sustained reinforcement of a notion, or create new facts by saturating the environment with signals that reinforce the message” (Michael Cole, 2017c). The influence of this strategy will only get stronger when the online and traditional media both involve in the fake news effort that fail to properly corroborate information. Clear to be seen, China’s element is involved in Taiwan’s politics.
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A striking case of China’s disinformation campaign against Taiwan’s government and affected online public opinion is a misfortune happened two months before the 2018 9-in-1 election. Su Chi-cheng, who is a deceased director of the Osaka branch of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office. This incident concerned the rescue of stranded Taiwanese citizens at an airport hit by Typhoon Jebi in September 2018. A news article from “觀察 者”, a state-affiliated outlet in China, claimed that the Chinese Consulate in Osaka had arranged 15 buses to evacuate stranded tourists from China, and Taiwanese who admitted they were citizens of China can also hitch a ride （王可蓉，2018）. However, the fact was the buses were arranged by the Japanese authorities, not the Chinese side. As reports indicated, Su Chi-cheng said in his suicide note that he had been troubled by this false Chinese disinformation, which claiming that the Chinese Consulate have done way more than the indifference response from the Taiwan’s Osaka Office (Stacy Hsu, 2018). It is worth noting that, before this manufactured fake news was corroborated, the politicians from the opposition party along with the media focused on this fabricated news and castigated the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the representative office in Japan（陶本和，
2019）. A news report from the Japan media expressed that Su’s suicide was due to the pressure from disinformation （劉彥甫，2018）. Not only the fabricated news from the content farms overseas, but the PTT has also become a channel for fake news distribution.
Because it was found that the fake content posted on social media and PTT came from IP address in Beijing （抓到了！關西機場，2018）.
Referring to the report from Global Taiwan Institute, Schmitt & Mazza (2019, pp.7-8) point out that “Taiwan’s media environment—comprising both new and traditional
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outlets—has become a fertile milieu for PRC influence operations”. For example, PTT has been a major tool of Chinese disinformation effort. Prior to the 2018 9-in-1 local election, a large number of PTT accounts were bought and sold not only on auction site in Taiwan, but also Taobao, a PRC based auction site. “Influential accounts are sold for as much as NTD 200,000 (approximately US$6,500). Many accounts purchased ahead of the elections, interviewees said, switched their tenor from moderately pro-DPP to strongly pro-KMT or even pro-CCP. These accounts posted frequently in the early morning hours, so that PTT users would see their posts first thing in the morning”.
Another attempt targeted agriculture products and the business with China, including fake news about tens of thousands of pineapples dumped in a dam and two million tons of pomelos being dumped into the Zengwen Reservoir before the 2019 legislative by-elections. In the pineapple case, the report includes a photo and a video, with the caption under the photo of tens of thousands of pineapples floating on the water wrote that: “after the DPP hold the reins of government, there is no quality governance. China has refused southern Taiwan’s ‘independent fruit and vegetables’, poor farmers worked hard for nothing! Very sad!” (Charles Yeh, 2018). In the pomelos case, a farmer in Tainan claimed that two million tons of pomelos were thrown into the Zengwen Reservoir on Taiwan’s TV channel, CTiTV. Later, the allegation was proven to be untrue, as the Zengwen Reservoir is unable to accommodate the number of pomelos alleged by the farmer. The farmer later apologized, claiming two million catties instead were thrown into the river bank of the Zengwenxi, but the “2 million catties” here is merely an adjective to describe the large number of pomelos, not indeed the number（楊金城，2019）. CTiTV was later fined 1 million NTD dollars. Because the report was based on the personal statement of the
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respondent without verification, the media did not review the content to be credible, and there was no balanced interview to verify（劉麗榮，2019）. CTiTV is a news channel belong to the Want Want China Times Group, its boss, “Tsai Eng-meng, was the target of the Anti-Media Monopoly Movement in 2012, when university students and civil society protested against his purchasing Taiwan’s cable network and inserting advertorials in the China Times newspaper to promote China’s political agenda” (Ketty Chen, 2019, p.14). Evidently, as one study from Reporters Without Borders found, since the China Times acquisition by the company in 2008, “the newspaper’s coverage of human rights in China fell by two thirds”, and “the tone of the article also became less critical, emphasizing positive reforms rather individual violations” (Cedric Alviani, 2019, p.40). It should be aware of that Want Want Group is not the only media outlet involves business interests in China. As one article reported, “Reuters has found evidence that mainland authorities have paid at least five Taiwan media groups for coverage in various publications and on a television channel, according to interviews with 10 reporters and newsroom managers as well as internal documents reviewed by Reuters, including contracts signed by the Taiwan Affairs Office, which is responsible for overseeing China’s policies toward Taiwan”
(Yimou Lee & I-hwa Cheng, 2019). When funding from the Chinese government become a big part of your revenue, it’s impossible not to exercise self-censorship, it gives China space to manipulate politics and influence public opinion in Taiwan.
Above evidences consistent with the argument asserted by the University of Oxford and the Reuters Institute noted that “posts on social media accounts run by China’s People’s Liberation Army were picked up widely this year by Taiwan’s news outlets, which ran photographs and video from the military’s accounts without checking their
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veracity” (Chris Horton, 2018; Lihyun Lin, 2018). These fabricated pieces of news all attempt to attack Tsai Administration with the negative perception, based on the premise that “China does not purchase Taiwan’s agricultural produce”. Although the news finally proven to be false, this sensational news has been broadcasted and roundly criticized and denounced, and was linked to President Tsai’s refusal to accept the 1992 Consensus and the DPP’s China Policy, further the omission of the DPP governance. Clear to be seen, the purpose of disinformation either from the Internet or the local media having the political stance on the CCP side, all try to attack and give rise to the rage on Tsai’s Administration. According to a research conducted by professor Wang Taili at the Graduate Institute of Journalism at National Taiwan University, confirmed that “fake news has the potential to affects voters’ voting behavior, with the younger, female, and lower-income voters having the least ability to assess news authenticity. She analyzed that it might have to do with the greatest sense of uncertainty and anxiety about the future being found among young people and low-wage earners” (Liu Li-ren, 2019; Yu-yen Chien, 2019, p.32).
A notable case of China’s large volume of Internet interference has serious affected public opinions and politics in Taiwan, is the victory of the KMT Mayor candidate Han Kuo-yu in Kaohsiung, where the opposition party, DPP has been ruled for 2 decades.
Although KMT’s victory in the 2018 9-in-1 election does not imply that China plays a decisive role in the process, it is undoubted that China has helped KMT Kaohsiung Mayor Candidate Han Kuo-yu increase massive rallying of supporters through social media. Han was an unknown name four months before the 2018 election, but his popularity had lead 20 percent ahead the DPP candidate Chen Chi-mai through the polls.
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As investigated by a journalist from Foreign Policy, Paul Huang argued that Han’s overwhelming present swept across the internet and media has played a critical role in propelling him to victory, especially the Facebook platform. In Taiwan, about 19 million out of the 23.5 million population have a Facebook account. However, aside from Han’s official Facebook page, another group also played a critical role in the campaign.
According to Paul Huang, “a Facebook named “Han Kuo-yu Fans for Victory! Holding up a Blue Sky! (韓國瑜粉絲後援團必勝！撐起一片藍天)”, was created on April 10, 2018, just one day after Han declared his candidacy for the KMT mayoral race” (Paul Huang, 2019). And the group soon become the largest unofficial fans page for his supporters.
Members in this group through distributing propaganda materials to support Han and fake news to attack Chen Chi-mai and DPP administration, later the group become “a hub for Han’s supporters to create, disseminate, and amplify weaponized information in their respective corner of social media, messaging apps, friends’ circles, or the family dinner table”, and after his thorough investigation, this group supporting Han’s campaign was
“not spontaneously created by Han’s fans. It was created, managed, and nurtured by what looks very much like a professional cybergroup from China” (Paul Huang, 2019).
In his investigation report, he interviewed two experts on the Chinese military and political warfare fields, below are the content quoted from Paul Huang’s report:
(1)
Ying-Yu Lin, an assistant professor at Taiwan’s National Chung Cheng University and an expert on the Chinese military, believes the cybergroup can be traced back to the Strategic Support Force (SSF) of China’s army. The SSF was created in December 2015 as part of a massive military reorganization initiated by Chinese President Xi Jinping, and it was made into an independent branch of the Chinese military that is now charged with conducting a wide range of operations
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including space, cyber, and electronic warfare. Lin said that Chinese cyberespionage activities heated up in late 2018, as a number of major Chinese hacker groups were observed to have returned to active duty after a few years of being dormant during the army’s reorganization. If Lin is correct, this would be the first confirmed case of China’s new cyber force attempting to influence foreign elections (Paul Huang, 2019).
(2)
Another expert has a different assessment. A psychological operations officer serving with the Political Warfare Bureau under Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense who uses the pen name “Lieutenant Ho”
believes this particular cybergroup was likely a private team contracted through a Chinese company rather than being a dedicated military or intelligence unit in itself—albeit with the Chinese government ultimately pulling the strings (Paul Huang, 2019).
Accordingly, the two experts believed that China’s interference in the 2018 local election is indeed and the CCP is highly possible involved in the operation, and there were even more websites, content farms, and platform out there used to drive Han to the success, like I have discussed above.
After the Chinese spy, Wang Li-qiang surrendered to Australia, he publicly disclosed that Beijing’s purchase of Taiwan media and funding of candidates, as well as the establishment of an intelligence station in Taiwan and the formation of cyber force, have successfully affected the result of the 2018 9-in-1 election, the same model is being used to interfere with Taiwan’s 2020 presidential election. Want told the Australia media: “I directly involved in the 2018 9-in-1 election operation, we have not only established more than 200,000 online accounts to attack the DPP, but also created many fans group for cyberbullying” （果殼，2019）.
Not only the social media helped Han boosting his popularity, traditional media such as CTiTV and CTV, that belong to the Want Want China Times Group, have long reported
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biased towards Han, and helped create the “Han Wave” (韓流). According to a report from Financial Times, Beijing has always been inclined to use business people to influence Taiwan’s attitude toward China. Tsai Eng-meng, is the man used by Beijing to influence Taiwan’s free media environment. After acquiring CTiTV, CTV, and China Times, these media have changed from mainstream publications to what critics’ call, the mouthpiece of the CCP. As the report indicated, “journalists working at the China Times and CTiTV told the Financial Times that their editorial managers take instructions directly from the Taiwan Affairs Office”. “A CTiTV journalist said Chinese government officials would ‘organize’
China coverage by assigning stories and editorial positions to China-based correspondents of a range of Taiwanese media”. “They have a say in the angle of the story, and whether it
China coverage by assigning stories and editorial positions to China-based correspondents of a range of Taiwanese media”. “They have a say in the angle of the story, and whether it