Countering disinformation together: First steps towards stronger EU-Taiwan ties

10 December 2021

On 3 November, the European Parliament sent its first official delegation to Taiwan for a three-day visit. Delegation members met with Taiwanese civil society actors and government leaders, including President Tsai Ing-wen, to discuss efforts to combat foreign disinformation. The delegation included members of the ‘Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes in the European Union, Including Disinformation’ (INGE), a committee created last year in response to the rising dissemination of disinformation to EU countries from authoritarian regimes, such as Russia and China.

The EU has prioritised countering disinformation because it fears that Russian attempts at influencing European elections and undermining citizens’ trust in their governments will contribute to the erosion of democratic processes in Europe. Taiwan has similar fears due to an influx of foreign disseminated information, mainly from China, and has attempted to counteract disinformation by adopting a whole of society approach. The EU should continue cooperating with Taiwan on disinformation-related issues not only to learn from Taipei’s struggles and successes but also to strengthen the EU-Taiwan relationship.

China’s disinformation strategy in Taiwan

Like Russia’s disinformation strategy towards the EU, Chinese cyber groups frequently use fake profiles and posts on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, WeChat, and YouTube, to spread disinformation in Taiwan. Beijing has disseminated disinformation to influence Taiwanese elections and undermine the government’s authority. Although no evidence proving Russia successfully using disinformation to influence the outcome of a European election has been uncovered yet, the same cannot be said for Chinese disinformation efforts in Taiwan.

Future cooperation could include Taiwanese and EU think tanks working with one another to study authoritarian regimes’ current disinformation strategies and the effectiveness of various efforts to combat disinformation.

In 2018, Han Kuo-yu, a Kuomintang (KMT) candidate with pro-China views, surprisingly won his campaign for mayor of Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s third-largest city, against the favoured Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate, Chen Chi-mai. Experts believe that Han’s digital campaign and overwhelming presence on social media — especially a 61,000-member strong Facebook group for Han’s supporters — played an important role in his win. Taiwanese journalists discovered that a Chinese professional cybergroup, most likely headed by the Chinese government, had created and managed the pro-Han Facebook group. This cybergroup produced thousands of posts spreading disinformation through Facebook about Han’s opposing candidate and the DPP government. The disinformation spread widely in Taiwan, frequently making it to other social media platforms and messaging apps. The Taiwan Public Opinion Center, a big data firm, concluded that these efforts had assisted in Han’s electoral win.

Similar fears of Chinese disinformation arose during Taiwan’s 2020 presidential election when Han ran against the incumbent president, Tsai Ing-wen. Chinese cybergroups continued to spread disinformation during this election but could not garner enough support on a national scale for the pro-China KMT candidate. The results of the 2020 election show the limitations of China’s current disinformation strategy; it could neither lift up a pro-China candidate to the national scale in Taiwan nor could it overcome President Tsai’s popularity. Most recently, Taiwan has also been combatting the spread of COVID-19 related disinformation from Chinese fake accounts and posts. These accounts have spread false information to inflate Taiwan’s COVID-19 numbers and sow mistrust in the Taiwanese government.

To counter the spread of disinformation, Taiwan has taken a whole of society approach, involving the government, civil organisations, and social media companies. For instance, the Ministry of National Defense set up a team to respond quickly to disinformation and correct false messages being spread online. The National Security Bureau also recently established a task force to counter deepfakes from China that seek to influence Taiwanese elections or undermine trust in the government. Civil organisations, such as Taiwan FactCheck Center and g0v, work with social media companies in Taiwan to report and fact-check disinformation spreading online. Cooperation between different parts of society has given Taiwan a greater set of tools to counteract the continuous dissemination of disinformation.

Future steps for EU-Taiwan cooperation

Since the EU faces similar disinformation efforts from both Russia and China, it should combine its resources and knowledge with Taiwan’s to protect democracies more effectively against the harmful effects of disinformation. Examples of these disinformation efforts in Europe include Russian and Chinese state-controlled media, as well as government officials on social media spreading rampant disinformation on the efficacy and safety of Western, manufactured COVID-19 vaccines to undermine trust in European governments. During a press conference in Taiwan, the EU delegation leader, Raphael Glucksmann, repeatedly praised Taiwan’s inclusion of different societal organisations to work together to combat disinformation, and stated that “a whole of society approach is absolutely crucial for us”. Glucksmann and other members of the INGE agreed that the EU needed to adopt a similar strategy of utilising a more democratic process by involving citizens and civil society actors to combat disinformation.

The EU should continue to support high-level meetings with Taiwanese government officials and civil society actors to foster further cooperation in the fight against disinformation. These meetings should include actors from all facets of Taiwanese society working on countering the spread of disinformation, such as think tanks, NGOs, and government officials assigned to anti-disinformation task forces. In these meetings, EU officials and civil society actors can learn how the different actors work together to combat disinformation from China and bring these lessons back to Europe. Joint workshops between Taiwanese and European civil-society actors should be established to foster relationships to encourage future collaboration. Future cooperation could include Taiwanese and EU think tanks working with one another to study authoritarian regimes’ current disinformation strategies and the effectiveness of various efforts to combat disinformation. Fact check organisations could partner with one another to develop new methods of monitoring social media platforms for disinformation.

Cooperation on disinformation projects between the governments will also be needed. For example, the EU and Taiwan should work together to create media literacy programmes for their citizens to learn how to identify disinformation. Now more than ever, people living in the EU and Taiwan need to be able to spot disinformation, as campaigns surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and COVID-19 vaccines continue to viciously circle on social media platforms. In addition, Taiwanese and EU officials should employ joint task forces and strategies to combat disinformation. These task forces would produce new approaches for policymakers on how the EU and Taiwanese governments can jointly combat disinformation, especially around COVID-19 and election meddling.

Disinformation is not a new phenomenon and will not be going away anytime soon. Authoritarian regimes will continue to evolve their disinformation strategies to push their own agendas and degrade democracies around the world, including the EU and Taiwan. By implementing the joint measures described above, the EU and Taiwan will be able to adapt more quickly and effectively to new forms of disinformation. Traversing its relationship with China while cooperating with Taiwan on this issue will be difficult for the EU, however, because it must be careful not to cross China’s red lines, such as recognising Taiwan as an independent country.

Brussels should not publicly support the Taiwanese government joining UN taskforces on disinformation, but it should be able to endorse Taiwanese civil-society organisations joining international groups focusing on disinformation. While keeping its relationship with China intact, the EU needs to find innovative ways to combat disinformation in order not to run the risk of weakening its democracies and losing citizens’ trust. Against this background, Taiwan and the EU should continue to strengthen their cooperation on various levels to better counteract disinformation together.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

Meghan Shoop is a research intern with the Stimson's Center's Defense and Strategy Planning programme, and a graduate student at George Washington University earning her master's in International Security. She holds a bachelor's degree from Wellesley College where she studied International Relations and Political Science. Image credit: Unsplash.