China is actively meddling

China is actively meddling

Taiwanese prosecutors focused on questionable polls under the island's new anti-infiltration law, designed to counter Chinese meddling, saying Lin's findings were falsified and orchestrated by Chinese Communist Party officials in Fujian province, on the Taiwan Strait.

Prosecutors said Lin "Pretended to interview or survey more than 300 citizens" and fabricated and produced fake surveys about the popularity of politicians in Taiwan. Lin's poll caused a shock as it predicted the pro-China Hou Yu of the Kuomintang (KMT) would win the election, albeit by a margin of just 1.22 percentage points. That would be the momentum Chinese President Xi Jinping wants to see ahead of Saturday's highly uncertain election.

Beijing is determined to prevent a third term for the Democratic Progressive Party, which is driven by an agenda of Taiwan sovereignty and close relations with the US, Europe, Japan, and other democratic powers. The election is being watched closely worldwide amid fears that tensions over the outcome could spark a military confrontation between Washington and Beijing in the South China Sea.

Taiwan is the island where more than 90 percent of the world's microchips are produced. Fake polls are just part of China's network of spreading disinformation through propaganda and espionage. Other elements of the campaign include fake news on social media and arrests of candidates for accepting Chinese bribes in cryptocurrency. The key message being spread from the pro-China camp is that William Lai, the DPP candidate, is a US-controlled dictator who will start a war with his reckless pursuit of Taiwan's independence.

Social media is awash with accusations that Washington and Taiwan are in an alliance to build biological weapons. Fake videos, images, and audio recordings generated by artificial intelligence are also widely used to defame and damage the reputation of candidates in elections.

Altogether, it aims to create an image of Taiwan as a country too connected to the evil United States of America and to suggest that a recession is looming thanks to the DPP. Beijing-backed bots are simply flooding the social networks of leading DPP candidates with pro-China propaganda.

"China is actively waging war against Taiwan through disinformation," Taiwanese Prime Minister Chen Chien-yen told media, referring to Beijing's use of a combination of economic coercion, military bragging and outright lies to intimidate its neighbor.

"Upon receiving disinformation, local collaborators help spread and convey messages to destabilize Taiwanese public opinion and society," he concluded.