Chinese Disinformation Campaign Targets Taiwan Amid Rising Tensions

Taiwan Fights Disinformation with Grassroots Activism and Technology

As waves of disinformation threaten Taiwan’s democratic foundations, citizens across the island nation are mobilizing in an unprecedented grassroots effort to safeguard their hard-won freedoms.

“Taiwan has gone through so much change,” explains Mark Hanson, a New Zealand journalist based in Taiwan. “From a country that was under martial law right into the late 1980s, Taiwan has developed into a thriving economy, a leader and innovator in technology, an open democratic society, the first place in Asia with gay marriage.”

This transformation is precisely what many Taiwanese fear could be undone by coordinated disinformation campaigns, particularly those allegedly originating from mainland China. While China’s military exercises and trade sanctions against Taiwan receive significant international attention, many Taiwanese view the information war as a more insidious threat.

“The information war has already started, a long time ago,” says Nelly, an English teacher in Taichung. “There’s some invisible threats everywhere, like the cyber attacks and [fake] news. It happens to us everywhere.”

As China pursues sovereignty claims over Taiwan under the One China Principle, concerns about digital manipulation have prompted innovative responses at all levels of society – from government ministries to community halls and temples.

Among those leading the fight is Jason Liu, an investigative journalist who now dedicates his work to tackling disinformation at the community level. Liu has spent five years researching disinformation across eight countries, including Ukraine, and has documented what he calls the “content mill empire behind online disinformation.”

According to Liu, Chinese propaganda often follows recognizable patterns. “You have different ways to identify if they are pro-China or coordinated with pro-China actors. If they are repeating the propaganda from state-sponsored media from mainland China, then they are part of the coordinated behavior,” he explains.

More troubling, Liu says those involved in spreading disinformation have become increasingly brazen. “They don’t hide anymore right now, they share the same picture, they use the state press release or they are making money out of this news cycle.”

The proliferation of artificial intelligence has dramatically lowered the barriers to entry for disinformation campaigns. “Everyone can do it, everyone can repost hundreds of messages every day,” Liu notes. “If you want to earn some money from the Chinese government, you just have to have the contacts to understand who would be willing to pay for it.”

Liu’s interviews have revealed networks of content creators in Mandarin-speaking countries like Malaysia and Singapore who profit from pushing disinformation into Taiwan’s information ecosystem. His solution, however, is refreshingly analog: face-to-face community engagement.

Through programs held in temples, schools, and community halls, Liu brings people offline to share his international work, screen documentaries, and discuss his articles. “We are hosting more and more in-person events with children, with students,” he says.

While Liu focuses on human connection, others are leveraging technology to combat digital disinformation. Billion Lee co-founded CoFact, an NGO that developed a chatbot to fact-check suspicious content. The organization employs an editorial team that works alongside volunteers to verify news and information.

Fresh from attending a conference on misinformation in Portugal, Lee participated in a hackathon where engineers, designers, and tech experts shared innovative approaches to recognizing and countering false information. The CoFact website offers multilingual tutorials explaining how users can filter news topics and identify fake stories.

“What CoFact tries to do is provide strategies, provide solutions,” Lee explains. “We don’t want to just blame government or blame China. As individuals here, we need to do something ourselves, be activists, rather than just being the taker and blaming it on everyone else.”

Despite the scale of the challenge, Lee remains undaunted. “I am doing what I can do. That is the thing I believe in, freedom, democracy… that’s the value I want to leave for the future.”

The Chinese Embassy in Wellington did not respond to emailed questions about the allegations of state-sponsored disinformation campaigns targeting Taiwan.

Taiwan’s approach to disinformation – combining governmental resources with grassroots activism and technological innovation – offers valuable lessons for other democracies facing similar challenges in the digital age.