Taiwan’s public policy institutions, as well as Taiwan Think Tanks and other organizations, recently held a symposium to discuss the issue of “China’s extensive foreign propaganda and gray zone operations against Taiwan”, inviting scholars and experts to participate.
The host, Assistant Professor Ma Junwei from the International Affairs and Strategic Studies Institute at Tamkang University, stated, “False information is now generated rapidly, with content that is incredibly realistic, making it difficult to guard against. We must enhance our ability to discern cognitive warfare and false information, think independently, and verify information.”
Associate Professor Huang Zhaonian from the Institute of National Development at National Chengchi University analyzed China’s gray zone operations and cognitive warfare against Taiwan. He explained that the “gray zone” lies between war and peace, where China aims to demonstrate its power, shape an atmosphere that suggests “the situation is stronger than Taiwan”, undermine Taiwan’s morale, and achieve the effect of “winning without fighting.” China shapes public opinion through direct information dissemination, indirectly influencing specific local collaborators, and mobilizing non-specific local collaborators.
Huang Zhaonian mentioned that gray zone operations include military and economic aspects. Military aspects involve official warships circling Taiwan and unofficial drones engaging in suspected military missions, which could coincide with events like the visit of US House Speaker Pelosi to Taiwan. Economically, China controls the number of “mainland tourists” and agricultural products imported to Taiwan as leverage, convincing the public that Taiwan’s economy must rely on China, thus pressuring the government to acknowledge the “1992 Consensus”, which is also part of cognitive warfare.
Former Director of the Asia Fact-Checking Lab, Li Zhide, stated that China’s “extensive foreign propaganda” has a long history, but is even more dangerous today due to the almost unrestricted spread of information on the internet, allowing every person to become a node of infiltrated news, greatly amplifying the overall effect.
Li Zhide analyzed that Taiwan’s television stations have been infiltrated by China since 2009, resulting in a sharp decline in the coverage of the Tiananmen Square incident. The next stage involves content farms, manipulating search results by flooding them with low-quality and biased news, altering the dynamics of media dissemination, and forcing mainstream media and talk shows to discuss these news items.
Li Zhide stated that current social media platforms and TikTok have become effective propaganda tools for China, delivering information directly to everyone’s hands. “By fact-checking, we can debunk the political narratives behind China.” In order to “justify” retaining Taiwan and resisting Communism, China would rather spread blatantly false information like “one-tenth of Taiwan’s population is Japanese” than reflect on the lack of appeal its own narrative has among the Taiwanese people.
After the discussion, the host and the youth participants raised questions such as “How to fact-check independently within limited time” and “Is it possible to counter China with cognitive warfare in return”, and the panelists engaged in thorough analysis and answers to these queries.