Hope you can have a look, I´ll pick the choice bits. Many items to be discussed here.
China stretches out its influence over the whole world. As for Taiwan, the island speaks the same language with China, that impact is even greater. Taiwan will hold presidential election in 2020. At this point, China is using information warfare with an aim to get pro-China candidate elected in this election. Many presidential candidates of the KMT have already called for a “peace agreement” with China. Once signed, Taiwan would risks itself to be recognized as a part of China, which may bring in “one country, two systems” policy and turn Taiwan into the next Hong Kong.
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In 2014, a survey by National Taiwan University showed a great generation gap between Taiwanese people’s perceptions of democracy. While young people think that they have the opportunity to change the government through elections(fair election). The older people think that democracy only means “the basic needs of everyone can be satisfied(narrowing the wealth gap).”
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As the Taiwanese news market is limited, the existence of so many news channels have lead to a vicious competition between news channels for advertising. In order to win audience share, many news channels have taken the road of sensationalism to attract the attention of the audience. Journalists are also finding it to be more difficult to conduct in-depth investigations and reports. At the same time, there are many business-sponsored news, which makes the boundaries between news and advertising more blurred.
[In such an environment, the thin media market makes it difficult for the media to play the function of the fourth estate; in addition, because many Taiwanese media outlets are facing tighter budgets, China can buy influence in the sector.
This we already knew. Then this is a theory I also support: the Martial law mentality:
On the one hand, during the dictatorship, through the education of the authoritative government, many people have developed an “authoritarian personality”. Consequently, political propaganda from the dictatorship period is still very persuasive.
On the other hand, through the party-state system, the KMT has taken hold of a large amount of assets, including borrowing directly from the state treasury, setting up companies, earning money through state-franchising, or even arbitrarily extorting trade revenue, filling their pockets with illegal money; these money were then laundered through companies and other means, therefore, while Taiwan has been transformed into a democracy, the KMT still uses these resources to win elections in an unfair way.
Then the reason for the sellouts: cash needed.
After president Tsai Ing-wen came to power, the majority passed “The Act Governing the Settlement of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations”, trying to sort out and deal with political parties’ properties. Within a few months of the consequential establishment of the “Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee”, the investigators found that for two companies held by the KMT, the Central Investment Co. Ltd and Xinyutai Investment Co. Ltd, the assets did not come from legal income such as party fees and political contributions, so the two companies were required to transfer assets back to the state. This made the KMT to no longer have the huge assets of the past, nor could it conduct social network operations or electoral marketing with these resources any longer. As a result, this gave the KMT a strong demand for funds and gave the Communist Party from China the space to intervene.
In the past, when life expectancy in Taiwan was not so long, the government gave the civil servants an 18% preferential interest rate for their savings, so that people have incentives to serve as military, civil servants or in the national education system. However, with the situation evolving and current life expectancy being as it is , such planning has led to the incoming collapse of the retirement pension. After Tsai Ing-wen took office, reforms were carried out to reduce the payment of many pensions, allowing the pension fund to operate steadily, however, it also led to the dissatisfaction of a large number of ancient civil servants.
This dissatisfaction has been used by China. China’s local facilitators have been infiltrating many groups of such person and use them to spread fake news. These ancient civil servants groups are generally older and unfamiliar with the Internet era’s fact checking tools. Their past experience of dictatorship has also allowed them to embellish the dictatorship and to believe that democratic freedom of speech will bring chaos. “Now, Taiwan is too free,” is what they often hang on.
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In order to operate, Chinese companies need to obey the government or the party’s instructions. This includes surrendering information or the obedience of the company’s top management. Therefore, once Chinese business owners reach a certain amount of financial resources, they will run for a seat in the National People’s Congress (NPC) and use this power to protect their assets.
In addition to influencing politicians, business men who have been operating in China can also form their own party in Taiwan. Once a Taiwanese gang leader, Chang An-lo, who later worked in China, returned to Taiwan to run the China Unification Promotion Party in Taiwan. Through village chiefs and even some religious networks, Chang continues to infiltrate and establish a network of contacts, and advocates peaceful reunification with China in Taiwan.
Al Jazeera once revealed in Taiwan that China has funded the China Patriotic Confederation, the China Unification Promotion Party and other organizations through the donations of specific Taiwanese businessmen, in order to infiltrate Taiwan, even asking the police to provide a list of pro-independence members in police station.
Taiwan’s churches and religious organizations are also being hosted by China. For example to attract Mazu’s believers, there is a trip to find Mazu’s roots in China. The Chinese house church also has exchanges with the Taiwanese church. In the previous anti-gay referendum, we saw that Chinese funds came in through the Wang Xuehong Foundation. In addition to spreading false rumors about the opposites camp in Taiwan, these rumors also seriously hurt and tear Taiwanese society.
As is the case in the United States or in Australia, China’s handling of information warfare in Taiwan has made extensive use of local facilitators, so it is harder to find concrete evidence than in a totalitarian state.
On the 8th of November 2018, Wang Li’s second war research institute(王立第二戰研所), which has been publishing strategy-related article in Taiwan for long, has compiled a flow chart of China’s manipulation of Taiwan’s elections from many reports. Although the flow of funds is difficult to confirm, what we can see now is that some media group owners have made a high-profile loyalty transfer to China. These media have by the way obtained a large number of subsidies from China, and have shuffled employees to shape their loyalty to the boss.
Apart from the media, content farms are also another issue. Some content farms in Taiwan will change the news headlines and then transfer them to their websites to attract traffic. Well-known content farms include www.guancha.cn who have disseminated information during the event leading to the suicide of a Taiwanese diplomat in Japan, as well as www.mission-tw.com shared by many pro-KMT fan pages , and happytifywin.com. According to media surveys, behind the happytifywin is Wuwei Network Technology Co., Ltd. located in Qinhuangdao City, Hebei Province, China; on Facebook, there is a “happytifywin Post News” group, which was established in September 2017 and later renamed as “Mayor Han Online support group”. It was later renamed as the “Terry Guo campaign for the presidential Online support group.” From this, it can be speculated that China may be conducting public opinion operations toward Taiwan through such technology companies. These content farms are the hub for many fake news, and many content farm articles are then sent to LINE or other private groups. After data analysis, many of the messages shared by the pro-KMT fan pages were mainly based on content farms articles. In addition to the content farm, there are also Youtube channels, such as “Jianghu Baixiaosheng(江湖百晓生),” which systematically produce and share fake news from China; the “China Unification is in the Present” video uploaded in July 2018, was viewed by 600,000 people. “The PLA launches an offensive, and Taiwan compatriots can apply for an identity card.” film also has more than 120,000 clicks.