China’s Unconventional Threats Against Taiwan: An Observational

Study from Twitter

Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has raged around the world since the
beginning of 2020. While many nations are grappling with the virus,
China has seized the opportunity to tip the balance of the world order.
After the outbreak receded domestically, China started positioning itself
at the forefront of fighting the pandemic and launched a large-scale
propaganda campaign in which, Twitter, China’s official social media
platform became the main battle field for their new diplomatic strategy.
However, this unconventional approach is threatening Taiwan’s position.
This article analyzes the tweets associated with Taiwan from the Chinese
state media and official accounts and to discuss the possible implications
on Taiwan’s international presence.
The term “unconventional threats” first appeared after the Cold War,
where many scholars strongly criticized the traditional security concept of
realism. Baldwin (1995) pointed out that the end of the Cold War had
triggered proposals for expanding the concept of national security to
include nonmilitary threats to national well-being; the United Nations
Development Program (1995) defined unconventional threats as
nonmilitary threats which include economic, health, food, environmental,
personal, community, political, etc. as part of security. Cyber security is
also considered as one of the unconventional threats, and online
propaganda has already proved its effectiveness to reshape the society
(Jessikka 2016).
However, little research has discussed how internet propaganda could
harm national interest and pose a threat to national security. Given the
escalating trend of propaganda on social media this article aims to decode
the intentions behind them and discuss the following issues; first, the
frequency and content of tweets associated with Taiwan. Second, the
likely impact on Taiwan’s society. Third, the possible trajectory for future
development.
Method
The Chinese government has banned all multinational social media
platforms from Chinese users other than domestic platforms such as
Weibo and WeChat. However, Twitter is the exception and the only social
media platform for Chinese authorities to announce official statements.
This article selected the account of the spokesperson for the Ministry
 of Foreign Affairs and five state-operated media accounts (CGTN,
People’s Daily, CCTV, China Xinhua News and China Daily) on Twitter
as the sample to analyze. It excludes any personal accounts of diplomats,
politicians and internet trolls in order to represent objectively the Chinese
government’s attitude toward Taiwan. Using the advanced searching tool
on Twitter, tweets with certain keywords in a given time period (January
30th- July 7th) were filtered and selected. Since January 30th was the day
that the Chinese government officially admitted human-to-human
transmission of COVID-19, this paper pinpointed it as the starting point
to collect data. It is believed that after this date the Beijing government
shifted its attitude from denying to accepting the outbreak to the outside
world. Therefore, this paper filtered content mentioning Taiwan from
January 30th to July 7th. Data was presented in chronological order from
the latest tweet to the very first tweet of the search instead of showing
only the most popular results. The reasons behind this is because
researcher can analyze the frequency and patterns of each tweet and
won’t rule out any data.
The results are shown in table 1.

Results
Within this time period, there were 324 tweets in total from six
Chinese Twitter accounts mentioning Taiwan. Data was then categorized
into six different groups and presented as total numbers and percentages.
Table 1 Analysis of Chinese Twitter Accounts
Content of the Tweets Tweets in Average Average Average
Total Number of Number of Number of
(Percentage) Comments Retweets Likes
Sovereignty Issues 34(10.5%) 38.4 35.8 133.4

Pandemic-related Issues 114(35.1%) 16.7 154.6 206.9

Political Announcement 106(32.7%) 26.6 18.9 70.6

Military Issues 23(7.1%) 33.6 35.9 118.6

WHO-related Issues 25(7.7%) 26.0 24.1 88.6

Others 22(6.8%) 11.1 23.7 68.7

Total 324
 The first group, sovereignty issues, is defined as topics related to the
One-China policy. For example, disputes over Hong Kong national
security law, the inauguration of Taiwan’s president, and the enactment of
the TAIPEI Act. Pandemic-related issues include the updates of COVID-
19 status across the strait and other government activities to prevent the
disease. The political announcement group combines propaganda, the
reiteration of national policies, and response to international incidents.
Military issues mainly concern the matters of arms sales and military
activities. Next, the WHO-related issues involve Taiwan’s proposal to
participate in the World Health Assembly (WHA) and other WHO-
organized activities. Last but not least, issues including economic
assumptions and daily news (earthquake announcement or celebration of
panda’s birthday) fall into the last group. There might be an overlap on
certain issues that were hard to differentiate. For example, a tweet post on
May 8th by CGTN :
Beijing on Friday reiterated that Taiwan is a part of China and thus,
won't be granted a seat in the WHO, again refuting allegations from the
Taiwan authorities that they wish to join the health committee as an
independent "country."
This tweet contains the sovereignty and the WHO issues. In this case,
the researcher placed it under the WHO-related issues group since the
main event was participation in WHO. Thus, each tweet was categorized
according to the relevance of their strongest idea to the content
categories.
Table 1 clearly shows that the main two areas of tweets are
pandemic-related issues (35.1%) and political announcement (32.7%). In
particular, the average retweet number and likes of pandemic-related
issues are extremely high at 154.6 and 206.9 respectively. Other results
such as the average number of likes related to sovereignty issues is also
notable.
Besides calculating the total number of tweets in each group, this
article also presents data on a monthly basis. Table 2 lists the sum of each
group from January to July, demonstrating the peak of tweets from
different categories in each month and the possible incidents behind
them.
Table 2 reveals the tweeting pattern behind the Chinese government.
February and May made up the majority of tweets, 126 out of 324 tweets,
 indicating several major incidents happened; Among six categories,
“political announcement” has been the main purpose of Beijing authority.
Table 2 Frequency of Tweets Per Month
Content of the Tweets Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May Jun. Jul.
Sovereignty 0 1 10 5 13 3 2
Issues
Pandemic-related 2 61 31 11 6 2 1
Issues
Political 1 20 10 14 48 12 1
Announcement
Military Issues 0 0 0 0 15 8 0
WHO-related Issues 0 0 0 5 20 0 0
Others 0 4 2 3 7 4 2
Total 3 86 53 38 109 29 6

Discussion
Given by the results above, the current study illustrates that the
Chinese government has used Twitter as a new diplomatic approach to
cope with Taiwan-related issues and has launched multi-channel
propaganda to pursue its interest. This paper raises two major statements.
First, Taiwan failed to respond to the unconventional threat from the
internet. Second, Taiwan is struggled to find its way out.
Since late January, China has turned its way to Twitter and presented
itself as a partner, a grateful recipient, and a selfless leader in face of the
pandemic. This has drawn attention from the international community
and diluting the fruitful results of Taiwan combating the virus.
Throughout the pandemic, Taiwan has managed to utilize disease-
prevention as a diplomatic strategy to maneuver in the international
community. Guilloux (2009) stated in Taiwan, Humanitarianism, and
Global Governance that Taiwan could eventually become an observer in
the WHA under certain circumstances, such as an overwhelming public
health emergency, should China fail to respond adequately. Yet Taiwan
still rejected from participating in this year’s WHA. Part of the reasons is
that China repeatedly suppressed any voice on Twitter to support Taiwan
and claimed its sovereignty over Taiwan. In response, due to fewer
Taiwanese users on Twitter and a lack of systematic approach, Taiwan
failed to respond properly on Twitter and gradually losing ground on the
social media platform. In this way, China claimed Taiwan as part of its
disease prevention network and further shrink Taiwan’s space in the
international realm.
Table 1 suggests that results other than pandemic-related issues,
military and sovereignty issues, can trigger more users to engage (leave
comments, retweet, or press likes). These two topics are considered the
red-line for the Chinese government and the tweets often spoke in a
strong tone which might be the reason behind the high participation rate.
Taiwan had been bombarded from China’s strong criticism on Twitter
in May due to the following three events. First, the United States
approved arms sales to Taiwan. Second, President Tsai received
international support for her inauguration. Third, Taiwan’s government
supported Hong Kong’s movement.
Table 2 highlights the strong opposition point from the Chinese
government and this research discovered the tweets centered during the
period of two sessions, the inauguration of President Tsai, U.S arms sales,
a convening of the WHA, and the legislation of Hong Kong security law.
Within these tweets, China used the term “separatist”, “seek
independence” and other sharp phrases to deliver a message that Taiwan
remains part of China.
Plus, this article also reveals the Beijing government’s attitude
toward Taiwan’s ruling party. In total 324 tweets, Democratic Progressive
Party (DPP) appeared in 21 different tweets, in which DPP was
denounced by Beijing for seeking independence and other anti-China
events. This highlights the tensions between the cross-strait relationship.

Conclusion
In the midst of the pandemic, China has successfully built a
stronghold on Twitter to oust Taiwan. China has taken advantage of a
massive amount of users on Twitter trying to influence global society.
Besides serving as an alternative channel for government officials to
publish an official statement, Twitter can further undermine Taiwan and
other like-minded countries’ common interests within the region through
overwhelming propaganda and disinformation. This paper proposes two
approaches to cope with this situation.
First, set up a third-party fact-checking center on Twitter. Taiwan
indeed already has a unit called “Taiwan FactCheck Center” on other
social media platforms, Facebook and LINE, to counter disinformation.
This article strongly urges the Taiwanese government to further
collaborate with Twitter and establish a fact-checking center.
Second, utilize the experiences in the battle with COVID-19.
Taiwan’s Digital Minister, Audrey Tang, has rolled out a “digital fence”
policy to combat disinformation during the pandemic. It encompasses
three pillars “fast, fair, fun” which means to deliver correct and humorous
information in time. “Humor over rumor” strategy aims to use memes to
reach out to more users swiftly. The researcher suggests elaborating the
same concept on combating propaganda on Twitter.
This research has pointed out the urgent need for the Taiwanese
government to focus on the unconventional threat from social media and
come up with countermeasures.