Awash in Disinformation Before Vote, Taiwan Points Finger at China

Taiwan is on high alert for digital-age trickery and deception that Beijing is using to try to swing a crucial election.
By Raymond Zhong

TAIPEI, Taiwan — At first glance, the bespectacled YouTuber railing against Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, just seems like a concerned citizen making an appeal to his fellow Taiwanese.
He speaks Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, with the occasional phrase in Taiwanese dialect.
His captions are written with the traditional Chinese characters used in Taiwan, not the simplified ones used in China.
With outrage in his voice, he accuses Ms. Tsai of selling out “our beloved land of Taiwan” to Japan and the United States.
The man, Zhang Xida, does not say in his videos whom he works for.
But other websites and videos make it clear: He is a host for China National Radio, the Beijing-run broadcaster.
As Taiwan gears up for a major election this week, officials and researchers worry that China is experimenting with social media manipulation to sway the vote.
Doing so would be easy, they fear, in the island’s rowdy democracy, where the news cycle is fast and voters are already awash in false or highly partisan information.
China has been upfront about its dislike for President Tsai, who opposes closer ties with Beijing.
The Communist Party claims Taiwan as part of China’s territory, and it has long deployed propaganda and intimidation to try to influence elections here.
Polls suggest, however, that Beijing’s heavy-handed ways might be backfiring and driving voters to embrace Ms. Tsai.
Thousands of Taiwan citizens marched last month against “red media,” or local news organizations influenced by the Chinese government.
That is why Beijing may be turning to subtler, digital-age methods to inflame and divide.
Recently, there have been Facebook posts saying falsely that Joshua Wong, a Hong Kong democracy activist who has fans in Taiwan, had attacked an old man.
There were posts about nonexistent protests outside Taiwan’s presidential house, and hoax messages warning that ballots for the opposition Kuomintang, or Chinese Nationalist Party, would be automatically invalidated.
In the southern city of Kaohsiung, thousands marched at a Dec. 21 rally to oppose pro-Beijing Han Kuo-yu, the presidential candidate for the Kuomintang.

So many rumors and falsehoods circulate on Taiwanese social media that it can be hard to tell whether they originate in Taiwan or in China, and whether they are the work of private provocateurs or of state agents.
Taiwan’s National Security Bureau in May issued a downbeat assessment of Chinese-backed disinformation on the island, urging a “‘whole of government’ and ‘whole of society’ response.”
“False information is the last step in an information war,” the bureau’s report said.
“If you find false information, that means you have already been thoroughly infiltrated.”
Taiwanese society has woken up to the threat.
The government has strengthened laws against spreading harmful rumors.
Companies including Facebook, Google and the messaging service Line have agreed to police their platforms more stringently.
Government departments and civil society groups now race to debunk hoaxes as quickly as they appear.
The election will put these efforts — and the resilience of Taiwan’s democracy — to the test.
“The ultimate goal, just like what Russia tried to do in the United States, is to crush people’s confidence in the democratic system,” said Tzeng Yi-suo of the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a think tank funded by the government of Taiwan.
In Taiwan, civil society groups such as FakenewsCleaner have worked to fact check social media posts and educate the public about disinformation.

Fears of Chinese meddling became acute in recent months after a man named Wang Liqiang sought asylum in Australia claiming he had worked for Chinese intelligence to fund pro-Beijing candidates in Taiwan, buy off media groups and conduct social media attacks.
And there are other signs that Beijing is working to upgrade its techniques of information warfare.
Twitter, which is blocked in mainland China, recently took down a vast network of accounts that it described as Chinese state-backed trolls trying to discredit Hong Kong’s protesters.
A 2018 paper in a journal linked to the United Front Work Department, a Communist Party organ that organizes overseas political networking, argued that Beijing had failed to shape Taiwanese public discourse in favor of unification with China.
In November, the United Front Work Department held a conference in Beijing on internet influence activities, according to an official social media account.
The department’s head, You Quan, said the United Front would help people such as social media influencers, live-streamers and professional e-sports players to “play an active role in guiding public opinion.”
“We understand that the people who are sowing discord are also building a community, that they are also learning from each other’s playbooks,” said Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s digital minister.
“There are new innovations happening literally every day.”
In Taiwan, Chinese internet trolls were once easily spotted because they posted using the simplified Chinese characters found only on the mainland.
That happens less these days, though there are still linguistic slip-ups.

Audrey Tang, the digital minister of Taiwan.

In one of the YouTube videos from Zhang, the China National Radio employee, a character in the description is incorrectly translated into traditional Chinese from simplified Chinese.
Zhang did not respond to a message seeking comment.
In December, Taiwan’s justice ministry warned about a fake government notice saying Taiwan was deporting protesters who had fled Hong Kong.
The hoax first appeared on the Chinese social platform Weibo, the ministry said, before spreading to a Chinese nationalist Facebook group.
Sometimes, Chinese trolls amplify rumors already floating around in Taiwan, Mr. Shen said.
He is also on the lookout for Taiwanese social media accounts that may be bought or supported by Chinese operatives.
Ahead of midterm elections in 2018, his team had been monitoring several YouTube channels that discussed Taiwanese politics.
The day after voting ended, the channels disappeared.
After Yu Hsin-Hsien was elected to the City Council that year in Taoyuan, a city near Taipei, mysterious strangers began inquiring about buying his Facebook page, which had around 280,000 followers.
Mr. Yu, 30, immediately suspected China.
His suspicions grew after he demanded an extravagantly high price and the buyers accepted.
Mr. Yu, who represents Ms. Tsai’s party, the Democratic Progressive Party, did not sell.
“Someone approaches a just-elected legislator and offers to buy his oldest weapon,” Mr. Yu said. “What’s his motive? To serve the public? It can’t be.”
Recently, internet users in Taiwan noticed a group of influencers, many of them pretty young women, posting messages on Facebook and Instagram with the hashtag #DeclareMyDeterminationToVote. The posts did not mention candidates or parties, but the people included selfies with a fist at their chest, a gesture often used by Han Kuo-yu, the Kuomintang’s presidential candidate.
Han’s campaign denied involvement.
But some have speculated that China’s United Front might be responsible.
The United Front Work Department did not respond to a fax requesting comment.
One line of attack against Ms. Tsai has added to the atmosphere of mistrust and high conspiracy ahead of this week’s vote.
Politicians and media outlets have questioned whether Ms. Tsai’s doctoral dissertation is authentic, even though her alma mater, the London School of Economics, has confirmed that it is.

Malaysia Is Fed Up With Chinese Cash

Belt and Road funding has become a bitter election issue.
By Adam Minter
Too much of a good thing? 

Xi Jinping won't be on the ballot when Malaysians vote for a new government on Wednesday. 

But he is on election billboards. 

Although it's probably not a role that Xi would've chosen for himself, China's influence on Malaysia's economy has become one of the most bitterly contested issues in a bruising campaign.
That's certainly awkward for China, which presents itself as a champion of economic development around the world. 

Increasingly, though, its vision isn't shared. 

In Malaysia and elsewhere, popular opposition to Chinese investment is rising, driven by the perception that its benefits flow only one way. 

In that sense, Malaysia's election should be a wakeup call.
Until recently, Malaysia actually sent far more investment to China than the other way around. 

But in 2013, Xi announced his signature Belt and Road initiative, a $1.5 trillion infrastructure project spanning 80 countries. 

It's designed to knit distant markets more closely to China, while also spurring local development. Malaysia's strategic location on the Strait of Malacca, through which about 40 percent of global trade flows, makes it a prime destination for such investment.
And China has indeed invested. 

So far, there are $34 billion worth of government-backed projects underway, including a gas pipeline and the $17 billion (at least) East Coast Rail Link. 

China's private sector is splurging, too: Between 2012 and 2016, Malaysia received $2.37 billion in Chinese real-estate investment, ranking it third among Belt and Road countries. 

Chinese money is also pouring into manufacturing, energy, and metals, as well as logistics and e-commerce.
Malaysia's current government has welcomed these investments as needed infusions into an economy battered in recent years by low oil prices and scandal-driven financial uncertainty. 

But several factors have started turning Malaysians against them.
For one thing, there are widespread fears about how China is financing these big projects and whether Malaysia can actually meet its payments. 

Last year, Sri Lanka handed over its Port of Hambantota to Chinese state-controlled firms in return for $1.1 billion in relief from debts incurred building the port. 

That development wasn't missed in Malaysia, where China has been lending just as aggressively.
Chinese companies are also notorious for importing workers, equipment and materials from back home, rather than relying on local resources. 

In the case of Malaysia's rail link, the government has even cited language barriers to defend the practice. 

Similar complaints have been aired from Ghana to the Philippines.
Chinese real-estate investment, meanwhile, has spurred jealousy, sovereignty concerns and xenophobia. 

Between 2012 and 2016, foreigners accounted for about 35 percent of residential land transactions in Malaysia, with Chinese making up the majority. 

Most notable is the massive Forest City development off the Straits of Johor, which is expected to eventually have 700,000 residents. 

So far, 70 percent of the buyers have been Chinese. 

The units, costing upward of $250,000, are out of reach for most locals.
Malaysia's opposition, led by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, hasn't shied away from exploiting these concerns. 

In a recent interview with Bloomberg News, Mahathir invoked both Sri Lanka's loss of Hambantota and the surge of foreigners into Forest City as reasons to scrutinize China's investment splurge. 

"No country wants to have an influx of huge numbers of foreign people into their country," he said.
It's a potent message. 

In 2015, Sri Lanka's president lost a reelection bid over accusations that he was too cozy with China, and his successor is now coming under similar attack. 

Although Mahathir is unlikely to unseat Prime Minister Najib Razak on Wednesday, his criticisms are taking a toll, as evidenced by the government's increasingly elaborate defenses of Chinese investment. 

No matter who wins, the Malaysian public will have become more cynical about China's role in its economy.
For China, that's surely an unwelcome development. 

But Belt and Road investment will become a divisive political issue in other countries unless China ensures that it doesn't become a burden for places that can ill afford it. 

That means lending on less onerous terms, hiring locally, and generally making sure that the benefits of its largesse are more widely shared.
Such steps won't make everyone happy. 

But they'll go a long way toward keeping Xi Jinping off of other election billboards.

How China trade has cost Clinton the election

By Ana Swanson

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump during the second presidential debate Oct. 9 at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)

China’s emergence as one of America’s biggest trading partners over the past 15 years has cost Hillary Clinton the election.
At least those are the findings of a hypothetical exercise by a noted group of economists who have studied how increasing competition from China has changed not just economic realities for Americans, but political life as well.
In a recent note, economists David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson and Kaveh Majlesi calculated that if Chinese import penetration had been 50 percent lower since 2000, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina would have elected the Democratic instead of the Republican candidate.
That would have been enough to put Clinton in the White House instead of President Donald Trump.
The research showed how large the effect of trade and globalization — topics addressed time and time again by Trump during the presidential campaign — may have been on the election.
The economists have done work in the past on what the shock of China’s entrance into the global economy has meant for American workers.
China, a massive country with one-fifth of the world’s population, had been largely closed off from the global economy after Communists took over in 1949, but started to reintegrate beginning in the 1980s and 1990s.
In 2001, with Bill Clinton's support, China joined the World Trade Organization, dismantling many of the country's remaining barriers to trade, and creating a huge new source of competition for American manufacturers.
Much of that effect has now been absorbed, but the political consequences have not.
In a previous paper, Autor, Dorn, Hanson and Majlesi showed that increasing trade with China had contributed to political polarization in the U.S. through the 2000s.
Areas that had been more exposed to trade competition with China ended up less likely to elect pro-China politicians to Congress, on both the right and the left.
“No matter how you sliced it, these trade impacts led to the removal of "moderates". And so we speculated that we might see something similar in the [2016] general election,” Autor said.
In the current paper, Autor and his colleagues compared something called the “two-party vote share” — how many people voted for the Republican candidate, divided by the total number of voters — in the 2016 election and in the election of George W. Bush in 2000, before China’s integration into global trade.
They examined election results for 2,971 counties and compared those with how Chinese imports affected industries and jobs in those areas between 2002 and 2014.
They found that Republicans gained votes in counties that were more exposed to Chinese competition, with a one percentage point increase in average Chinese import penetration in a county leading to a 2.09 percentage point gain in the Republican two-party vote share compared with 2000.
“Areas that were more exposed had a significantly greater increase in the Republican two-party vote share, and because the election was pretty close it seems to have mattered a fair amount,” Autor said.
Autor pointed out that the political changes were probably not “just about trade policy, per se. We think it feeds into a sort of sense of nationalism, the sense that the American way of life is potentially threatened, and that a certain way of a type of employment and a structure that went with that is going extinct,” Autor said.
These political trends are also related to the fact that economic prospects for non-college-educated Americans, especially non-college-educated white men, look dimmer now than they did 30 years ago, Autor said.
The economists also carried out a fascinating exercise looking at how voting might have differed if China hadn’t become such a manufacturing powerhouse.
The table below shows that analysis.
With 10 or 25 percent less Chinese import growth, Michigan and Wisconsin would have voted for the Democratic candidate in the 2016 election, but Trump still would have won the election with more electoral votes than Clinton, the economists found.
But with 50 percent less import growth, they find the effect is strong enough to flip Pennsylvania and North Carolina as well, turning the election in Clinton’s favor.

The economists emphasized that this hypothetical scenario is “extremely restrictive.”
If there had been no trade shock from China, the world would have been quite different, as would the 2016 election, the researchers say.
Yet, Autor said, trade with China did have a big effect on how people voted.
“The places that were trade impacted did swing heavily toward Trump, relative to their votes in previous elections.”