Taiwan has the freest Internet in Asia and it ranks sixth globally, according to Freedom House’s latest ranking published on Wednesday, with China taking the last place for the ninth year in a row.
The Freedom on the Net 2023 report evaluated online freedoms based on obstacles to access, content limitations and breaches of user rights, the organization said in a news release on its Web site.
Seventy countries and Internet environments that encompass 89 percent of the world’s Internet users were included, it said.
Photo: Bloomberg
An Internet freedom score of more than 70 indicates the country or territory is “free,” a score of 40 to 70 indicates the place is “partly free,” and a score of less than 40 means the country is “unfree,” the human rights watchdog said.
The country with the world’s freest Internet environment is Iceland with a score of 94, followed by Estonia with 93, Canada with 88 and Costa Rica with 85, it said.
Taiwan scored 78 points, behind the UK with 79, but ahead of Germany and Japan with scores of 77, it said.
The report struck a pessimistic tone, stating that Internet freedoms are under attack globally and that scores have generally declined, adding that the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) “threatens to supercharge online disinformation campaigns.”
AI-based tools that generate deepfake videos, images and texts were utilized in no fewer than 16 countries by individuals, entities and governments, including former Pakistani prime minster Imran Khan, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former US president Donald Trump, it said.
China, as one of the world’s “most technically sophisticated authoritarian regimes,” is currently engaged in AI research and development that seeks to “weaponize” the technology into “force multipliers for censorship,” the organization said.
Beijing employs chatbots to control the flow of information on social media and deliberately utilizes precensored content in training algorithms to ensure the content they generate does not deviate from official narratives, it said.
“Chatbots produced by China-based companies have refused to engage with user prompts on sensitive subjects like Tiananmen Square and have parroted CCP [Chinese Communist Party] claims about Taiwan,” Freedom House said.
In addition, China regulators ordered tech companies Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) and Ant Group Co (螞蟻集團) to exclude ChatGPT from their services as part of the effort to insulate Chinese users from content that had not been filtered by Beijing, the organization said.
Beijing routinely conducted “harsh crackdowns” on Internet-based speech, and Chinese nationals have been jailed for expressing their views online, it said.
Anti-corruption advocate Xu Zhiyong (許志永) was sentenced to 14 years in prison in April, the report said.
However, Chinese citizens remained undaunted by the ramped-up digital censorship, the organization said, adding that protests over a deadly fire in Urumqi, where toll was reportedly worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, triggered a nationwide policy reversal.
“People employed creative language on social media to evade censors, launching hashtags like ‘A4’ and ‘white paper exercise’ to evoke the blank sheets of paper that demonstrators raised to protest the extremity of CCP censorship,” it said.
‘CORRECT IDENTIFICATION’: Beginning in May, Taiwanese married to Japanese can register their home country as Taiwan in their spouse’s family record, ‘Nikkei Asia’ said The government yesterday thanked Japan for revising rules that would allow Taiwanese nationals married to Japanese citizens to list their home country as “Taiwan” in the official family record database. At present, Taiwanese have to select “China.” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said the new rule, set to be implemented in May, would now “correctly” identify Taiwanese in Japan and help protect their rights, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The statement was released after Nikkei Asia reported the new policy earlier yesterday. The name and nationality of a non-Japanese person marrying a Japanese national is added to the
AT RISK: The council reiterated that people should seriously consider the necessity of visiting China, after Beijing passed 22 guidelines to punish ‘die-hard’ separatists The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has since Jan. 1 last year received 65 petitions regarding Taiwanese who were interrogated or detained in China, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday. Fifty-two either went missing or had their personal freedoms restricted, with some put in criminal detention, while 13 were interrogated and temporarily detained, he said in a radio interview. On June 21 last year, China announced 22 guidelines to punish “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists,” allowing Chinese courts to try people in absentia. The guidelines are uncivilized and inhumane, allowing Beijing to seize assets and issue the death penalty, with no regard for potential
‘UNITED FRONT’ FRONTS: Barring contact with Huaqiao and Jinan universities is needed to stop China targeting Taiwanese students, the education minister said Taiwan has blacklisted two Chinese universities from conducting academic exchange programs in the nation after reports that the institutes are arms of Beijing’s United Front Work Department, Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) published yesterday. China’s Huaqiao University in Xiamen and Quanzhou, as well as Jinan University in Guangzhou, which have 600 and 1,500 Taiwanese on their rolls respectively, are under direct control of the Chinese government’s political warfare branch, Cheng said, citing reports by national security officials. A comprehensive ban on Taiwanese institutions collaborating or
STILL COMMITTED: The US opposes any forced change to the ‘status quo’ in the Strait, but also does not seek conflict, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US President Donald Trump’s administration released US$5.3 billion in previously frozen foreign aid, including US$870 million in security exemptions for programs in Taiwan, a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters showed. Trump ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid shortly after taking office on Jan. 20, halting funding for everything from programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases to providing shelters for millions of displaced people across the globe. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said that all foreign assistance must align with Trump’s “America First” priorities, issued waivers late last month on military aid to Israel and Egypt, the
RSS