Taiwan: The Frontline of the Disinformation Wars

On September 5, when Typhoon Jebi throttled Japan and forced the evacuation of Osaka’s flooded Kansai International Airport, a separate storm of unsubstantiated social media rumors began brewing in Taiwan.

In a post on the Professional Technology Temple (PTT), an online Taiwanese forum similar to Reddit, a user claiming to be a Taiwanese citizen awaiting evacuation said he had been rescued by the Chinese government, which had sent 15 tour buses and invited Taiwanese nationals onboard.

The post was quickly picked up by Taiwan’s Chinese-language Apple Daily and Sanlih TV News. It was followed by a widely circulated September 6 report by China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, which said China had evacuated 32 Taiwanese citizens, citing the Chinese consulate in Osaka. Another September 6 report by China’s state-run Global Times, itself picked up by several Taiwanese news outlets, claimed that Taiwanese tourists boarding the buses were told they could only board if they identified themselves as Chinese.

Taken at face value, the deluge of news items collectively exhibited Taiwan’s failure to assist its citizens during a time of crisis, leaving them at the mercy of Chinese goodwill.

The problem: The rumors weren’t true. Government officials now believe they were the work of state-sponsored Chinese actors aiming to destabilize Taiwan.

Within two hours, other PTT users had refuted the original post and traced it to an IP address registered in mainland China. The post, according to PTT founder Ethan Du, was taken down that same day. But false stories continued to spread throughout Taiwanese social media and news outlets, even as doubts arose when a Taiwanese tourist who had been stranded at Kansai Airport said buses could not enter the flooded airport in the first place.

On September 15, the nonprofit Taiwan Fact Checking Center (TFC) debunked the story after contacting the airport, which said it had turned down an offer from the Chinese government to send shuttle buses.

Their report was released just one day after Su Chii-cherng, the director-general of Taiwan’s Osaka representative office, committed suicide. According to Japanese public broadcaster NHK, Su left a note expressing that he was pained by the scathing public criticism of his office, spurred by the cacophony of false reports, for not doing enough to help its citizens.

What happened in Osaka, Taiwan’s Digital Minister Audrey Tang said, was a situation “where people collectively look back and start to think, maybe we rushed to conclusions. Maybe we should have stopped and said: ‘Is it true or not?’”

Tang, who became Taiwan’s first digital minister in 2016, rolled out the country’s pioneering vTaiwan digital platform for policy deliberation and debate which, by encouraging participatory behavior and open engagement with public officials, aims to help eradicate the climate of fear and distrust in which rumors and outright lies breed. Outside of government, Taiwan’s civic tech community, g0v (pronounced “gov-zero”), has produced tools such as Cofacts, a fact-checking social media chatbot, part of a culture of innovation in Taiwan that has flourished under the shadow of its neighbor, China.

However, the threat of state-sponsored disinformation, which officials say is increasing as Taiwan’s November 24 local elections approach, has led some top officials to discuss adopting a more direct strategy. Shortly after the September Kansai incident, the investigative bureau of Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice said it had found “unequivocal evidence” that Beijing was responsible for disinformation intended to divide Taiwanese society. The false Kansai Airport post, said Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Deputy Minister Chen Ming-chi, “originated from a content farm in Shanghai.”

“Our laws should be amended in response to the threat” posed by Chinese influence, said Chen, speaking at a conference held by the government-funded Institute for National Security and Democracy Research (INDSR) think tank on October 9. “Our laws should be able to prevent, prosecute, and punish any sabotage activities.”

Taiwan is now considering amending its National Security Act to potentially criminalize the spread of false information online. Any eventual implementation of such considerations – which would require laws allowing the government to access citizen data – remains firmly within the realm of speculation.

However, free speech advocates have reacted with grave concern. Legislative approaches like those proposed by Taiwan “inevitably end up becoming mechanisms for silencing dissent,” Ethan Zuckerman, the director of MIT’s Center for Civic Media, told The Diplomat at g0v’s October biennial summit.

Taiwan is no stranger to propaganda: Throughout its long cross-strait détente with China, both the Republic of China (Taiwan) and People’s Republic of China have blasted messages loud and soft at each other. The digital disinformation threat Taiwan now faces, however, is as new to the young democracy as it is to the rest of the world.