Can China Swing Taiwan’s Elections?

Taiwan has long been the central target of China’s influence and information operations. As part of its quest to compel the island to unify with the mainland, Beijing has now spent decades trying to swing Taiwanese voters away from candidates skeptical of the mainland and toward ones more friendly. Three days before the 2000 presidential vote, for example, Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji hinted that the island risked a Chinese invasion if it elected Chen Shui-bian, who had a history of pushing for Taiwan to declare independence. In 2008, when the moderate Ma Ying-Jeou was favored to win the election, China shifted away from overt threats and toward economic inducements, negotiating directly with Taiwanese fruit farmers (traditionally opponents of Ma’s party) to reduce Chinese tariffs. In 2015, when the less pro-Beijing Tsai Ing-wen was ahead in the polls, China hit her party’s website with phishing attacks and malicious code. And during the 2018 municipal elections, China used hundreds of content farms to churn out digital disinformation designed to hurt candidates Beijing saw as less friendly.

As Taiwan gears up for its January presidential contest, it has again been subjected to a deluge of online and offline influence efforts from Beijing, which hopes to kick Tsai and her incumbent Democratic People’s Party (DPP) from power and replace them with the more pro-Beijing Kuomintang (KMT). China is placing a special emphasis on using local proxies in Taiwan—including pro-mainland Taiwanese media companies, paid influencers, and co-opted political elites—to amplify partisan narratives that stoke division in Taiwanese society and erode faith in the island’s political system. Compared with troll factories and crude spam, local proxies make it harder for Taiwanese voters and officials to separate Chinese influence from genuine domestic debate.

But although Chinese efforts to influence the election are sophisticated—and although they have challenged the Taiwanese people’s faith in their democracy—the island has responded with its own wave of innovation. Taiwan has a network of civil society groups, such as DoubleThink Lab, that are pioneering new ways to combat foreign meddling. The government, too, has advanced anti-disinformation initiatives, and it is working hard to root out Chinese proxies. And Taiwanese voters are highly attuned to Beijing’s operations.

The government, in other words, is resilient. So are its people. They can withstand China’s assault on democracy—provided they stay aware.

BLOWING SMOKE

From the moment Taiwan became a democracy, China has tried to influence the island’s elections. But ever since then-DPP candidate Tsai Ing-wen handily won the 2016 presidential contest, Beijing has accelerated its endeavors. The DPP has its roots in the Taiwanese independence movement, and so Beijing has reacted to its newfound dominance with a combination of alarm and furor. Since the Tsai era began, China has spent at least tens of millions of dollars on influence campaigns designed to bolster non-DPP candidates in Taiwan’s elections.

But despite this persistence, the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts have never proven particularly effective. The KMT’s candidates won locally in 2018 and 2022, but analyses of those elections indicate that domestic concerns—including changes to Taiwan’s pensions policy and displeasure with the DPP’s economic reforms—were responsible for influencing voter choices rather than Chinese meddling. When foreign policy was on the line, as it was during Tsai’s 2020 reelection bid, China’s efforts went nowhere. Despite an aggressive Chinese media campaign and an onslaught of attacks from CCP-backed social media accounts, Tsai overwhelmingly won reelection.

There are many reasons for Taiwan’s resilience. One is the network of nonprofits, which help flag misleading content and spam. Another is civil society’s general success at raising public awareness about China’s tactics. During the 2022 elections, for example, China launched a heavy-handed disinformation campaign to spread rumors that the DPP was complicit in a deal to sell Taiwan’s leading semiconductor firm, TSMC, to the United States. The campaign led to widespread public rebuke, with scholars issuing a joint letter condemning China’s information operations. Prominent news outlets, including Taiwan’s Business Today, published articles that warned about disinformation and misinformation.

China has spent at least tens of millions of dollars on influence campaigns.

For the 2024 contest, the Chinese Communist Party has continued to spread misinformation. It is, in particular, using local proxies to spread partisan narratives that play on fears of rising cross-strait tensions. This anxiety is authentic to Taiwan: the KMT’s presidential candidate, Hou Yu-ih, has depicted the vote as a choice between “war and peace,” stating that the DPP’s moves to deepen ties with the United States and promote independence will lead to conflict. But to help amplify this message, the CCP has turned to Taiwanese businesses to suggest a DPP vote could lead to war. The Want-Want Group, for example, a Taiwan-based media company that receives subsidies from the Chinese government, has posted multiple videos praising the KMT and playing up the prospects of war. One proclaims, in its title, that the “DPP is ‘on the road’ to corruption, to war, and to danger.” Another accused the DPP of “quietly preparing for war” and spread a rumor that the DPP vice presidential candidate met with U.S. political operatives to discuss a Chinese-Taiwanese conflict.

Arguing that DPP politicians are too close with U.S. ones is a pastime of the CCP and its local supporters. A Taiwanese newspaper, for example, falsely reported that the United States asked Taiwan to develop biological weapons. According to the Taipai Times and Taiwanese government officials, this article was likely sourced from Chinese propaganda.

Beijing has, of course, had proxies in Taiwan for years. According to Puma Shen, a professor at National Taipei University and the former chair at DoubleThink, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office has paid for local Taiwanese officials and leaders to take luxurious trips to the mainland since at least 2019 as part of an effort to shift public opinion. In past election cycles, Taiwanese businesses with operations in China have taken money from sources linked to the Chinese Communist Party and then donated it to pro-China candidates. Such laundering helps China avoid easily being named and shamed, and when Beijing launders its ideas through proxies, China’s messaging is more likely to spread. In a February post to Facebook, for example, a former KMT politician and pro-Beijing influencer spread the false claim that the United States had a plan for the “destruction of Taiwan,” citing Russian state media. The claim was both picked up by Taiwanese media and amplified by Chinese government sources.

Proxies could also help China overcome Taiwan’s defenses. In 2018, 2020, and 2022, for example, social media companies such as Meta grew adept at identifying and quickly taking down posts from suspected content farms, limiting the reach of China’s campaigns. But proxies make it trickier for social media firms to separate authentic posts from propaganda. It can make it tricky for Taiwan’s people, too.

IMMUNE RESPONSE

Will China’s tactics swing the election? Beijing does not need to persuade many voters for its efforts to succeed. The 2020 contest may have been a blowout, but based on voting numbers from that election, Beijing would have needed to sway only around ten percent of voters to turn the KMT’s loss into a win. If the polls are correct, today’s election will be much closer.

And even if Chinese meddling does not swing the contest, it can still shape Taiwan’s politics. Sustained efforts to infiltrate Taiwan’s information environment can undermine the public’s faith in their electoral process; according to a report from the Taiwan Institute for Governance and Communication Research, for example, almost two-thirds of voters in Taiwan say that the prevalence of election disinformation has negatively affected their trust in government institutions. It is a deeply concerning statistic.

But that fact does not mean Taiwanese democracy is in jeopardy. Taiwan’s electoral systems remain open and strong, in part because the Taiwanese public has been sensitive to perceived Chinese interference. In fact, Beijing’s attempts to coerce voters may actually strengthen the island’s democracy by spurring its civil society to keep responding. In 2018, when China was ramping up its online information operations against Taiwan, two civil society organizations established the Taiwan Fact Center to enhance media literacy and curb the effects of disinformation. Other digital innovations—like fact-checker apps for popular social media platforms in Taiwan—have sprouted up to combat China’s assaults on Taiwan’s information space.

Even if Chinese meddling does not swing the presidential election, it can still shape Taiwan’s politics.

Combating Chinese proxies can be more challenging. But Taiwan’s responses to Beijing’s meddling are getting better. Taiwanese civil society groups devoted to combating international disinformation have become leaders in their field, including by developing new AI tools. These tools can quickly scan and flag posts on social media platforms for misleading content—including content that Chinese proxies took out of context or used with incomplete information. The groups’ media literacy and social resilience programs are also focused on keeping up with the CCP’s tactics. One nonprofit organization launched in June 2022, Kuma Academy, runs training programs designed to educate the public on China’s evolving tactics to influence Taiwan’s political, social, and information space. Its classes are immensely popular, with thousands of people on the waitlist for Kuma’s monthly basic training courses.

The work of these groups is complemented by Taipei’s efforts. The island’s inaugural digital minister, Audrey Tang, has leveraged technology to improve democratic participation and keep Taiwan’s media open and accurate. In the lead-up to the election, for example, the ministry has worked with civil society organizations to leverage AI tools such as ChatGPT to create bots that flag, categorize, and debunk potentially misleading content online in almost real time. To tackle disinformation efforts more directly, Taiwan’s government set up a task force in 2023 that brings together different departments—including the Digital Affairs Ministry, the Ministry of Education, the Central Election Commission, and the Ministry of Justice—to monitor the Internet and media for signs of information manipulation surrounding the election.

Finally, Taiwan has passed laws to crack down on suspected instances of election meddling. In 2019, for instance, it enacted the Anti-Infiltration Act, which prohibits foreign entities from making political donations and bars the use of illegally procured funds for political aims. The government is now using this law to shut down Beijing’s attempts to leverage local proxies. Taipei, for example, has launched a sweeping investigation into a 2023 money-laundering scheme in which the CCP both paid and coerced Taiwanese businesses with interests in China to fund pro-Beijing candidates.

None of these efforts have stopped China from trying to influence Taiwan’s upcoming election, nor will they stop Beijing in the future. Unless it gives up on trying to take control of the island, the CCP will always work to distort Taiwanese politics. But the island has devoted considerable time and resources to bolstering its resilience, developing a response as adaptive as Beijing’s efforts. Yes, China is coming for Taiwan’s election—but Taiwan is ready for it.