Heading into Taiwan’s presidential election, one of the most consequential elections this year in Asia, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has ramped up its election interference efforts, abruptly raised tariffs on some imports, threatened sanctions if Taiwan’s political parties do not bend to Beijing’s will, and, most recently, launched a satellite over the island, triggering a nationwide air raid alert. This economic coercion, followed by a show of military might, is part of the CCP’s standard playbook when the people of Taiwan exercise their democratic freedoms and go to the polls.
(Join FPLive and Rep. Krishnamoorthi to discuss the results of the election on Jan. 22.)
This time round, however, the CCP has expanded the battleground, using social media in more sophisticated ways and targeting people in other democracies as Beijing increasingly uses online tools—content farms, bots, messaging apps—to spread disinformation in democracies it sees as threatening its interests, . It’s a pattern Americans must recognize and counter now, as we head into our own tense election season in the United States.
Taiwan is often discussed in the context of American competition with the CCP and the policy discussion of when and how the United States will come to Taiwan’s defense. But it is also a remarkable expression of democracy, and one that has lessons for the United States’ own system. Taiwan has proved one of the world’s most remarkable democratic success stories. In 2023, Freedom House rated Taiwan 94/100 on political rights and civil liberties, far ahead of longer-established democracies in Latin America and South Asia, as well as the United States. In its 2020 election, Taiwan saw a voter turnout of 75 percent. Women were elected to fill almost half of the seats in Taiwan’s legislature, compared to less than 30 percent in the U.S. Congress. Taiwan is doing something very right—almost radical—when it comes to representative democracy.
The success of Taiwan’s democracy is why the CCP actively seeks to manipulate political discourse not just in Taiwan, but also in other democracies that question Beijing’s narrative. Using a series of hundreds of fake Facebook accounts, a coordinated . A fake poll suggesting the people of Taiwan preferred a Beijing-supported candidate was disseminated widely across media last month; police later found that the entire poll was fabricated.
In Canada, when parliamentarian Michael Chong When Australia called for an inquiry into the origins of COVID-19, the CCP lashed out with a ban on some agricultural imports, ramping up its political interference campaign. We know that the CCP will only expand its efforts to interfere in democratic elections worldwide. According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CCP interfered more in the 2022 U.S. midterm elections than it has in previous cycles, through messaging campaigns on TikTok and other efforts to “portray the U.S. democratic model as chaotic, ineffective, and unrepresentative.”
The fundamental point is this: Taiwan’s future, and the future of any democracy, must be decided by its voters—not by influence campaigns run out of foreign capitals. On top of Taiwan’s robust democratic safeguards, there is strong bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress for initiatives to push back against these threats—not only in Taiwan but around the world. Here are three bipartisan ways the United States can act now to stand up to the CCP’s threats to democracy:
- The United States and Taiwan should partner together to prevent CCP disinformation and manipulation on social media platforms more broadly. In a recent report from the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party, Democrats and Republicans called for divestment from social media platforms controlled by foreign adversaries.
- Congress must quickly pass legislation allowing the Biden administration to respond to the CCP’s economic coercion. Congress should pass the Countering Economic Coercion Act to penalize economic coercers like the CCP and support trading partners like Taiwan.
- We should work with Taiwan to share best practices across the Indo-Pacific to counter Beijing’s disinformation efforts. As the primary target of the CCP’s disinformation campaigns, Taiwan has accumulated tremendous expertise that makes it an ideal partner for enhancing our and other targeted countries’ protections against disinformation.
Every voter has the right to make decisions free from intimidation, disinformation, and coercion. The United States must act to protect that right at home and abroad, and Taiwan stands as the latest test case of the strength of democracy on the world stage.