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Lai Ching-te, the presidential candidate of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive party, has accused China of unprecedented interference in his country’s elections, in a reflection of the charged atmosphere in which voters will head to the polls on Saturday.
“China meddles every time Taiwan holds elections, but this time it is the most serious we have ever seen,” Lai, who is currently Taiwan’s vice-president, told international media on Tuesday. “No matter if it is propaganda or military intimidation, cognitive warfare or fake news, they are employing it all.”
The Chinese Communist party has long attempted to infiltrate Taiwanese society and co-opt residents and social groups as part of its strategy to sway Taiwan towards unification with the mainland. The government of Taiwan’s current president Tsai Ing-wen has frequently accused Beijing of election interference.
But Lai’s remarks were the strongest yet during the current election. The DPP candidate is in a close race against former police chief Hou Yu-ih from the opposition Kuomintang, which is more open to compromise with China, and Ko Wen-je, a former surgeon who appeals to swing voters.
Lai said Beijing was portraying the poll as a choice between peace and war in an effort to secure the election of a more China-friendly government.
“If this interference succeeds, then Taiwan would not be electing a president but a chief executive, it would become like Hong Kong,” he said.
The remarks come less than a week after Ma Chih-wei, an independent candidate in parliamentary elections also being held on Saturday, was detained on charges of allegedly taking CCP financing for her campaign.
Prosecutors in the city of Taoyuan, where Ma is running, said that she registered her candidacy after receiving instructions from CCP officials on a trip to China last April, and took campaign contributions in the cryptocurrency Tether worth more than NT$1mn (US$32,000). A judge confirmed that Ma would be held incommunicado, as she was deemed a flight risk.
The case is the most high-level prosecution yet under an Anti-Infiltration law that bars Taiwanese citizens from acting on behalf of hostile foreign forces to compromise the country’s democratic processes.
Taiwan’s previous counter-influence efforts have focused on local Chinese governments hosting grassroots-level Taiwanese officials on all-expenses paid visits. Last year, as well as during elections in 2020 and 2018, dozens of Taiwanese village chiefs and borough wardens — who play a crucial role in campaign mobilisation — were investigated for such trips.
Other long-running practices include subsidised religious tours of Chinese temples, support for triad groups and indigenous communities, pressure on Taiwanese businesspeople in China and information warfare campaigns, according to Taiwanese government officials and analysts.
Taiwanese researchers said that several social media accounts had been hacked during the election campaign to disseminate fake news content that originated from Chinese accounts.
“We had observed those respective tactics before, but it is the first time they frequently appear in combination,” Puma Shen, a criminologist at National Taipei University and chair of digital defence NGO Doublethink Lab who is running as a parliamentary candidate for the DPP, told reporters late last year.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, the department in charge of implementing policy towards Taiwan, did not respond to a request for comment.
Taipei has also criticised the Chinese military’s frequent manoeuvres near Taiwan’s waters and airspace.
The defence ministry recently began disclosing the activity of Chinese military balloons, which collect atmospheric and other data, in its daily updates, and last weekend denounced such flights as part of “attempts at cognitive warfare to affect the morale of our people”.
However, national security officials said the People’s Liberation Army has released such balloons over Taiwan for years.
