Scholar warns China’s election interference online ‘all-out attack’ to undermine democracy

China’s election interference has become an “all-out attack” online, with fake accounts even impersonating anti-China voices to deepen political divisions and undermine trust in democracy, a scholar warned Monday, October 19, ahead of Taiwan’s local elections next month.

“The bigger ambition is to make you feel that the entire democratic system is unreliable and that dialogue is simply impossible,” said Shih Hsin University associate professor Liu Yu-hsi (劉玉晳) at a forum in Taipei organized by the DPP’s China Affairs Department.

She suggested that Chinese interference had moved beyond simply supporting or opposing certain candidates. Instead China aims to “intensify confrontation” in Taiwan and “make you feel that elections are really unpleasant,” she said.

Liu, who serves as a member of the Presidential Office’s Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Committee, warned that AI had made fake social media accounts increasingly convincing, with some even posing as opponents of China to sow discord. “The CCP's online interference has become an all-out attack,” she said, adding that protecting Taiwan’s democracy means protecting “the entire atmosphere of discussion and democratic dialogue.”

University of St. Thomas professor Yeh Yao-yuan (葉耀元) also said that China aims to “create mutual suspicion throughout society and gradually make people lose faith in their democratic system.”

Yeh said manipulated news and AI-generated content circulating on YouTube and other social media platforms could leave voters making political decisions based on unreliable information. He suggested that if election results failed to match the choices voters believed they were making, they could become disillusioned with the democratic system itself.