The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) last week published a report titled Truth and Reality with Chinese Characteristics that reveals how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using its propaganda system to brainwash people in other countries.
For instance, it invests in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, mobile gaming and immersive technologies to shape and distort people’s perceptions of reality, with the aim of boosting the CCP’s cultural, technological, economic and military influence.
It also uses commercial companies to collect data on their users and build databases, and uses the data to gain a thorough understanding of its target audience, with the aim of exercising greater control over the global information environment and systems.
Living as we do in democratic Taiwan, we need to know what methods the CCP uses to indirectly control and brainwash people around the world.
China’s lists of national key cultural export enterprises and projects for 2021–2022 and 2022–2023 name dozens of mobile games and gaming companies whose interests are interwoven with those of the party, such as receiving state subsidies that enable them to continue to enjoy global success, which in turn advances the CCP’s mission of boosting the nation’s cultural soft power.
In the field of e-commerce, for example, the China-related e-commerce platform Temu — the most-downloaded free iPhone app in the US last year — collects large amounts of user data that can be shared with China’s propaganda system. While Temu is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, the company is owned and operated by Ireland-based PDD Holdings, which also owns Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo.
In the field of gaming, some game developers have close mutually beneficial connections with the CCP, which might help to publicize the developers’ products while unlawfully obtaining personal data. Due to the strategic value of the user data they collect and generate, online games pose similar security risks to those of e-commerce platforms.
Under the leadership of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP has renewed its emphasis on a national strategy of media convergence that brings together traditional and emerging media.
This is closely connected with people’s insufficient understanding of the CCP, which puts their rights in danger.
The party uses digital media — notably data resources that digital media can generate — to use media more effectively in its communications strategy and create feedback loops in the international sphere.
The task of blocking CCP infiltration would depend on the joint efforts of democratic governments and a more thorough institutional understanding of the risks posed by new technologies.
Such an understanding should guide the authorities as to how to set new standards for emerging technologies and help businesses to commercialize such technologies with the goal of safety and security.
They should also help users learn to distinguish between real and false information, and gain a broader awareness of foreign information campaigns that might be present in their everyday lives. Armed with such knowledge, people would be more able to identify the potential risks.
Chen Chun is an international affairs observer.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of
RSS