Disinformation
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Conflicts - Tensions
Fake news, nonexistent journalists part of Beijing’s information manipulation scheme
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS When United States diplomat Kurt Campbell traveled to the Solomon Islands to counter the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence in the South Pacific country, he saw just how far Beijing would go to spread its message. Campbell, now the U.S. deputy secretary of state, woke up one morning in 2022 to a long article in the local…
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Conflicts - Tensions
PRC pushes propaganda, manipulated information about human rights abuses
Voice of America The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is using new propaganda campaigns to obscure its human rights abuses against Tibetans and Uyghurs. The PRC recently invited foreign bloggers to Xinjiang in northwest China, home to millions of Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority. It also inaugurated a communication center to produce content spreading PRC-favored information about Tibet, which…
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Conflicts - Tensions
Palau’s upcoming election triggers concern over PRC manipulated information
Jessica Caterson Palau, a Blue Pacific nation of 22,000 people, will hold its presidential election in November 2024. It comes amid increasing influence attempts by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and a potential manipulated information campaign aimed at swaying results, a frequent strategy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Palau, in conjunction with Taiwan and the United States, began…
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Conflicts - Tensions
Beijing’s support for Russia casts doubt on claims of respect for other nations’ sovereignty
FORUM Staff Days before Russia’s unprovoked 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) top foreign policy official claimed that Beijing respects the sovereignty and independence of all nations, including Ukraine. Days afterward, the PRC abstained from a United Nations Security Council vote demanding Russia stop its attack on Kyiv. A decade earlier, the PRC pledged “to provide…
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Conflicts - Tensions
Taiwan provides insights for democracies to counter cognitive warfare
FORUM Staff Democracies can learn lessons from Taiwan to counter cognitive influence operations, according to a new journal article. In the piece, Taiwan Army Col. Hsu Min-Cheng, a doctoral student at Taiwan’s National Defense University, explores how entities such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) employ techniques and emerging technologies such as deepfakes to stoke societal divisions and subvert national…
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Conflicts - Tensions
Report: More than 700,000 Tibetans forced to relocate
Radio Free Asia The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) forced relocation of more than 700,000 Tibetans from their homes since 2016 has led to joblessness, economic hardship and social exclusion, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW). Of those uprooted under purported poverty-reduction measures, 567,000 lived scattered across the region and 140,000 in villages. The May 2024 report,…
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Conflicts - Tensions
Taiwan embraces status quo for cross-strait peace
FORUM Staff Taiwan’s democracy is helping ensure stability in the Taiwan Strait, throughout the Indo-Pacific and across the globe. All three presidential candidates in the self-governed island’s January 2024 election vowed to maintain the cross-strait status quo. “Despite increased military and economic challenges, my top priorities remain pragmatism and consistency,” President-elect Lai Ching-te wrote in The Wall Street Journal newspaper…
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Conflicts - Tensions
Deepfake audio falsely portrays Marcos as confrontational
FORUM Staff Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. did not call for military action against “a particular foreign country” as depicted in a deepfake online post that manipulated his voice, his communications office said. The forged audio surfaced in late April 2024 amid increasingly aggressive actions by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in part of the South China Sea that…
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Conflicts - Tensions
CCP spreads false narratives about bioweapons to distract from party’s biometrics data collection
FORUM Staff The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) false claims that the United States is developing biological weapons are a core element of the CCP’s malign disinformation campaigns against the U.S. and its Allies and Partners. In fabricating such claims, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) purposely ignores its ethnic-based research involving the Roma peoples and Slavic minorities. In fact, the…
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Conflicts - Tensions
How Taiwan beat back disinformation and preserved election integrity
The Associated Press The rumors about vote fraud started swirling as the ballots in Taiwan’s presidential election were being tallied in mid-January 2024. There were baseless claims that people had fabricated votes and that officials had miscounted and skewed the results. In a widely shared video, a woman recording votes mistakenly enters one in the column for the wrong candidate.…
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