Beijing is mass-posting videos featuring a false “secret history” of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on hundreds of social media accounts in a disinformation push ahead of Saturday’s presidential election, sources said.
The Secret History of Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文秘史) is a 300-page document containing rumors and negative content first published last month on the online open repository Zenodo.
The material is being turned into hastily produced videos with artificial intelligence (AI)-generated voiceovers and fake hosts, and being posted on YouTube, Instagram, X and other platforms, a national security official familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity.
Photo: Screen grab from Austin Wang’s Facebook page
The content’s creation and spread bore the characteristic traits of an informational operation by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, the official said.
The videos, which were being shared about 100 times per minute, were promptly replaced if deleted by platforms or the accounts were banned and had been edited using Capcut, software developed by Chinese firm ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動), which owns Douyin, they said.
The videos used virtual hosts, including characters that resembled Chinese-speaking newscasters, foreigners, and in at least one instance, Santa Claus, they said.
However, the content did not generate high rates of engagement due to the low production quality, including the artificial appearance and voice of the virtual hosts, and the use of Chinese-language terms not commonly used by Taiwanese, the official said.
The campaign used more social media platforms than usual, including a manga subforum of the online bulletin board Professional Technology Temple, Mirror Literature and a Facebook group for real-estate listings, they said.
China is known to wage disinformation campaigns against leaders of democratic states, including one last year targeting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but the recent operation exceeded it in scale and resources, the official said.
Beijing is likely using Taiwan as a test bed for information warfare techniques that could be deployed against other countries while still damaging the Democratic Progressive Party at the ballot box on Saturday, the official said.
Austin Wang (王宏恩), an associate professor of political science at the University of Nevada, echoed the official’s assessment.
As of Tuesday, more than 100 nearly identical videos had been uploaded to YouTube since Sunday, Wang said.
The videos were mostly a recital by an AI-created virtual host of the same document and pictures chosen by an algorithm, he said, adding that all of the uploads had single-digit view counts.
The flood of videos suggests that Beijing has the ability to create the impression that the material is generating public interest, he said.
“There is no doubt this activity is coordinated and a show of force,” Wang said. “Its scale far exceeded anything we tracked before.”
PLA MANEUVERS: Although Beijing has yet to formally announce military drills, its coast guard vessels have been spotted near and around Taiwan since Friday The Taiwanese military is on high alert and is closely monitoring the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) air and naval deployments after Beijing yesterday reserved seven airspace areas east of its Zhejiang and Fujian provinces through Wednesday. Beijing’s action was perceived as a precursor to a potential third “Joint Sword” military exercise, which national security experts said the PLA could launch following President William Lai’s (賴清德) state visits to the nation’s three Pacific allies and stopovers in Hawaii and Guam last week. Unlike the Joint Sword military exercises in May and October, when Beijing provided detailed information about the affected areas, it
CHINA: The activities come amid speculation that Beijing might launch military exercises in response to Lai’s recent visit to Pacific allies The Ministry of National Defense (MND) yesterday said China had nearly doubled the number of its warships operating around the nation in the previous 24 hours, ahead of what security sources expect would be a new round of war games. China’s military activities come amid speculation Beijing might organize military drills around the nation in response to President William Lai’s (賴清德) recent visit to Pacific allies, including stops in Hawaii and Guam, a US territory. Lai returned from the week-long trip on Friday night. Beijing has held two rounds of war games around Taiwan this year, and sends ships and military planes
Five flights have been arranged to help nearly 2,000 Taiwanese tourists return home from Okinawa after being stranded due to cruise ship maintenance issues, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications announced yesterday. China Airlines Ltd (中華航空), and EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) have arranged five flights with a total of 748 additional seats to transport 1,857 passengers from the MSC Bellissima back to Taiwan, the ministry said. The flights have been scheduled for yesterday and today by the Civil Aviation Administration, with the cruise operator covering all associated costs. The MSC Bellissima, carrying 4,341 passengers, departed from Keelung on Wednesday last week for Okinawa,
China is deploying its largest navy fleet in regional waters in nearly three decades, posing a threat to Taiwan that is more pronounced than previous Chinese war games, the Ministry of National Defense said today. Speaking in Taipei, ministry spokesperson Sun Li-fang (孫立方) said the scale of the current Chinese naval deployment in an area running from the southern Japanese islands down into the South China Sea was the largest since China held war games around Taiwan ahead of 1996 Taiwanese presidential elections. China's military has yet to comment and has not confirmed it is carrying out any exercises. "The current scale is
RSS