US Can Draw Lessons from Taiwan on Fighting China’s Disinformation: Report

TAIPEI, Taiwan—The United States can learn from Taiwan how to confront the Chinese regime’s disinformation, according to a recent report by the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The report, titled “Protecting Democracy in an Age of Disinformation: Lessons from Taiwan,” analyzed campaigns from China that spread misleading information about Taiwan’s 2020 presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic. The United States has also seen misleading information about the pandemic and the 2020 election being promoted on social media via Chinese officials and fake bot accounts originating from China. The think tank acknowledged that “the disinformation campaigns carried out by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are often obscured by the secrecy and opacity of the CCP’s ‘united front’ approach, which makes it difficult to accurately diagnose and right-size the problem of disinformation, complicating efforts to craft effective solutions.” But the Taiwan government’s tactics, such as setting up …