Anatomy of a fake news story: United Daily News and "zero dollar shopping"

Looks scary but ultimately it's just two guys in a lion costume

"My daughter was going to go to the US, but her flight was canceled due to the Canada fires. And also she thinks it's dangerous because of the 'zero dollar shopping' in the news," a friend said recently. 

"What on earth is 'zero dollar shopping'?" I asked.

"You haven't heard of it? It's a big problem in California," she said. "It's in the news!" 

She cited United Daily News (聯合報), a Taiwanese newspaper that's staunchly pan-blue but generally seen as reputable. There is indeed such an article, starting with discussion of 'zero dollar shopping' (零元購) and then launching into several subsections criticizing various, mostly liberal, policy initiatives in California, blaming them for what they imply is the disastrous situation of the state. 

Let's take a look at what "zero dollar shopping" is, dive a bit into the UDN article, and then widen our scope to figure out where UDN got the idea that this is a crisis gripping California and the US as a whole.

"Zero dollar shopping" is essentially organized pickpocketing, looting or theft. I couldn't find a single thing using that term in US media, but that seems be a translation issue: 零元購 or "zero dollar shopping" is a Mandarin slang term in China -- I'm less sure about Taiwan -- for what is essentially organized theft. The closest English translation I could find was "flash robs": there are several references to these at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry for this term, and many of them seem to be from reputable news sources. 

The UDN article reads as serious policy analysis, though it takes the tone of an editorial. It primarily blames California's Proposition 47 for the uptick in "zero dollar shopping". Proposition 47 passed in 2014 and reduces certain non-violent crimes from felonies to misdemeanors in an attempt to reduce prison overcrowding. UDN dismisses it as an obviously ridiculous policy choice (again with no input from experts) and calls Black Lives Matter "radical". It calls this and other mostly-liberal policies 'crude' or 'shortcuts' without any sort of input from experts. It's presented as news but is quite literally just, like, their opinion, man.

There was no citation or reference whatsoever in the first part of the article about "zero dollar shopping", though plenty of links were offered to the Wikipedia sites of the various stores mentioned.  The best reference UDN offers is a screen grab of an American TV news report from NewsNation's Morning in America. I watch a lot of infotainment "morning shows" in the US because I spend a lot of my time there severely jetlagged and awake at weirdly early hours. I've never heard of Morning in America, but NewsNation claims to be centrist despite concerns that it actually leans to the right.

Links in later sections of the article include citing a rabidly anti-union website -- not exactly a great source of real news -- and exactly one link that's worth reading: The Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy. They use this link to claim the media has viciously criticized Proposition 47, but the article itself makes the strong case that this criticism is misguided: 

Despite the public narrative that Prop. 47 is increasing crime rates, the evidence indicates that this is false. California’s statewide violent and property crime rates are lower now than they were in 2010, even before Plata. While there has been an increase in rates of certain crimes such as aggravated assault, robbery, and auto theft, Prop. 47 did not reclassify or attempt to influence any of these crimes. Furthermore, crime rates in other cities including San Jose, Oakland, Richmond, and Fairfield have decreased or remained stable. These contradictory outcomes suggest that Prop. 47 is not the cause of Los Angeles’ uptick in aggravated assault, robbery, and auto theft.

It also cites The Washington Post as criticizing Proposition 47. This is a real article from 2015, but it's not linked. It cites an increase in various nonviolent crimes in California, but admits that the link to Prop 47 is unknown and unclear (the Georgetown article above points out that crime rates in California are actually lower than in 2010, which both the writer and UDN would have realized if they'd actually read the article they linked). 

That's all fairly typical in Taiwanese media -- after all, a free press is a precondition for quality journalism, but doesn't guarantee it -- but it gets slightly weirder. 

My friend also said she saw a blurb from UDN discussing "zero dollar shopping" that cited The Washington Post. It's not hard to find this -- here's a screenshot: 

I clicked on that link, and it took me to an entirely unrelated article on US arms sales to Taiwan! Maybe that's just something weird with the algorithm or results, as the headline matches the article it leads to, but language in the blurb comes from the first article linked above. I just thought it was odd. 

The Washington Post story and most of the "organized theft" articles from the "flash rob" Wikipedia page are from the 2010s; only one is from 2022. It points out that crime is actually on the downswing if you go back just a few years: 

Robberies in 2021 are up 3.2% in Los Angeles compared with 2020, but are 14.1% lower than in 2019. In and around Union Square in San Francisco, robberies fell nearly 5% from 2020 to 2021, while burglaries fell 2.3%.

 

It's not rare for conservative media in the US -- which to me is most media -- to confuse correlation with causation and fearmonger incessantly about even the most benign attempts at compassionate systemic reform. This is swirled around by tabloid rags like the New York Post, which more recently brought up Prop 47 in relation to a story about a San Francisco Target "locking down" its merchandise. 

Other recent coverage is more along the lines of the Georgetown journal piece and the LA Times article. Even CNN doesn't buy that "flash robs" are a serious issue because, again, the data simply don't support it.

If the US media is at best divided on the issue -- and in more recent years, inclined to think it's a non-issue -- where did UDN contributor Liao Chi-hung (廖啟宏) get the idea that it's somehow a serious issue crippling California and the US as a whole? From his professional background, I'd think Liao should know better.

It concerns me, because Liao's piece reads like expert analysis, when it's mostly garbage that either lacks meaningful citation, or deliberately misrepresents the content of its references. Yet it was enough to convince my friend and her daughter that there was indeed a massive "organized theft" based crime wave ripping across the US, endangering passerby, and that this was also reported as fact in the US media. I doubt she actually checked the links in the article, and I don't blame her; if I were a non-native speaker I probably wouldn't, either.

There may not be much meaningful support for Liao's position in reputable media, but there's plenty in the disreputable bowels of the Internet! 

At least one of these articles predates UDN's platforming of Liao's absolutely ridiculous opinion, and there are lots of Tiktoks under the hashtag #零元購, and a few Youtube videos. Here's one example, and here's an eye-rolling propaganda piece by some random foreigner in English, put out by CTI (中天). A Yahoo! news article cites the LA Times (which, again, has pointed out that robberies are falling in the long term, not rising). Of course I was mostly going to bring up posts by the Mandarin-speaking online world, as I couldn't find much that was useful searching for "zero dollar shopping" in English. 

This shouldn't have been enough to get Dr. Liao's knickers in a twist about a California legal policy that has no proven connection to crime rates which are, from a longer-term perspective, going down. Maybe he's just a credible guy with a preposterous set of opinions. It happens (see: Chen Weiss, Jessica). 

About ten days after that, give or take, veteran reporter Fan Chi-fei (范琪婓) put out a Youtube video treating the idea of "zero dollar shopping" like a fact of life in the US. The video blurb alone makes the country seem like a lawless scene of hell and disorder. The US isn't great, but it's not quite that. Fan had previously worked for both deep blue TVBS and blue-red CTI (中天), which notably got caught in enough lies that their TV license was revoked (the ruling has since been overturned). However, she's also worked for pan-green Sanli 三立. Fan doesn't seem like a typical unificationist or anti-US mouthpiece, so I doubt she intentionally spread what is, at its core, a bogus story.

Then, in the past few days, frightfully dodgy websites full of extremely dodgy English have been pissing out laughably dodgy content, so that a search for "zero dollar shopping" in English produces plenty of hits. Any native speaker or mastery-level speaker of English as a second language would immediately see these for what they are: an array of utter trash. 

Again, however, this was enough to convince a highly intelligent person and proficient English speaker that the US was a dangerous place due to this "zero dollar shopping". It looks like a joke to me, but it wouldn't necessarily to someone else. 

It's obvious why US conservatives would push this false narrative: attack a blue state, especially one that's seen as an attractive place to live for many. Make Democrats and their liberal policies look bad. Drum up the base. Get people scared and angry about the Other, in this case the fear of violent criminals and by extension, the poor. Tale as old as time. 

Why would Chinese-language media do this, though? Perhaps their crappy websites and baseless Tiktoks are meant to cause not just other Chinese people, but Taiwanese as well, to feel that the US is a terrifying, lawless society. Who would want a poorly-governed superpower as a friend and ally? In fact, who would want to visit it? The US touts itself as a freedom-loving democracy -- is this what happens when you are "too democratic"? Perhaps we should aim to be a little less "free", a little more like, oh, say, safe and happy China?

(I don't actually think the US is "too democratic"; if anything it's not democratic enough. But I hope some of you remember this oft-repeated line in Taiwanese media during the Ma Ying-jeou years. "Democracy is good but Taiwan is too democratic!" Barf.) 

This is indeed what I think is happening, as the English on these websites isn't good enough to convince anyone except middling-proficiency users, and perhaps not even then. Therefore, the show is probably not for us. Added together, they sure look like a preponderance of news in English, though! 

Besides, I've noticed some of these "zero dollar shopping" links are said to be videos from other democratic countries like Korea and Japan (here's one tweet by a pro-China account with a not-insignificant number of followers, but there are a handful of others if you look). It's almost as if they're trying to make every democratic nation that Taiwan has friendly relations with look like a lawless hellhole, when they're not.

I can't prove they're taking Liao and Fan's silly idea that organized theft is causing the destabilization of American society and targeting it at Taiwanese, or Chinese, or others around the world. Besides, it's hard to even prove that these dodgy sites are deliberately engaging in fake news, buttressed by credible professionals. After all, the best fake news has a kernel of truth to it. A handful of US opinionators. A few true-ish statistics. A New York Post article. The fact that a small number of "flash robs" have, indeed, occurred. 

But it sure looks like it's deliberately fake, there are Taiwanese people who believe it, and people like Liao Chi-hung, Fan Chi-fei and UDN should know better.

All the unfounded "evidence" Ma Ying-jeou used to attack the DPP on 6/4 (Part Two!)

Does this look like the face of a liar to you?

(Yes.)

It's easy to spout bullshit. It's easy to lie, or take a kernel of truth and present a slanted and ultimately inaccurate perspective on it, calling your take the real truth. It's been done since the birth of political discourse because it's efficient, it's simple, and people will believe you.

What takes a long time? Refuting someone else's lies and bad takes. That requires reams of free time and tracts of verbiage. 

Fortunately, I type fast and am in quarantine, and a blog has no word limits. Why not debunk every accusation Ma Ying-jeou hurled at the DPP in his offensive post on June 4th? Sure, he briefly mentioned the Tiananmen Square Massacre, but it's clear what he really wanted to do was compliment Xi Jinping and trash his own country's democracy and elected leader. 

At least, he wanted to trash Taiwan's democracy. I'm reasonably sure he believes that China is his country and Xi Jinping currently leads it. 

Regardless, the crux of his argument is worth refuting point-by-point. Much of what he references was barely covered in English-language media, if at all. He uses specific terms even the most fluent second-language Mandarin speakers might be unfamiliar with (I know I was). And there are people who will believe it. 

I discuss the entirety of his statement in my previous post. Here, I'll address the specifics, starting with the middle of the post where he goes into detail.

Although Taiwan still flies the banner of democracy, under the Democratic Progressive Party's governance, it has gradually slid into "unfree democracy":  closing television news stations, liquidating opposition parties, "checking the water meter" of the people [this is a slang term], interfering with the judiciary,  an all-around 'greening' [turning pro-DPP] of independent agencies, revising the law to exonerate the corrupt former president [Chen Shui-bian], using internal propaganda to mislead citizens and sowing hatred simply to follow the 'political correctness' of the so-called 'anti-China protection of Taiwan'. International public opinion turns a blind eye to these initiatives, which harm Taiwan's freedom and democracy, but I am deeply concerned.

There's a lot to cover here, so let's go point-by-point, news item by news item.

"Closing television news stations"

The television station in question is CTiTV, which has severe editorial integrity issues and has been known to broadcast disinformation.  

It was done because they breached regulations several times and were routinely broadcasting false information without fact-checking. They were also found to lack editorial independence from their owner, pro-China Tsai tycoon Tsai Eng-meng, whose Want Want group receives funding from China. Want Want China Times Media Group (of which CTiTV is/was a part) was also accused of taking orders directly from the Chinese government. The original Financial Times piece is here, but paywalled.

Even if you oppose the closing of CTiTV, it wasn't done to crush dissenting voices. Plenty of pan-blue networks are still on television, and CTiTV is still alive on Youtube. While other networks may have fact-checking, editorial and general quality issues (including pan-green ones, which are hardly a bastion of fantastic journalism), CTiTV is the only one the NCC has actually refused a license renewal to. Typically a network won't fall afoul of the NCC if they plausibly believed false information was true at the time it was broadcast.

Some critical responses to this incident described Taiwan's media environment as being solidly "green" -- Han Kuo-yu even stated that "90% of media is pan-green" during the 2020 election -- and taken CTiTV's downfall as a harbinger of some sort of authoritarian DPP crackdown. That's simply not the case. It's true that by viewership the pan-green channels dominate (at about 66% as per the above link), but that doesn't mean that pro-DPP news channels are the only choice; it means more people choose to watch them.

In other words, it's possible to sincerely disagree on the NCC's decision, but it's not possible to credibly call this a grab to dominate the media or a sign of "Green Terror". 


"Liquidating opposition parties"

This probably has to do with transitional justice. Essentially, Ma is saying here that money the KMT can be credibly accused of stealing over the decades of its brutal, corrupt, totalitarian rule should not be taken from the KMT and given back to the nation it was stolen from. Not great.

"Checking the water meter"

This is Internet slang for the police entering a home on false pretexts, for example, to say that the home's water meter needs to be checked when it doesn't. It's also a catch-all for general intimidation of anyone who opposes you -- usually through a real-life visit -- while making excuses for your presence. 

The KMT likes to complain about this -- Alex Tsai at one point said it would lead to a modern Wuchang Uprising which...what? At first I thought it was pure projection: one thing I've learned in life is that people who make preposterous accusations against others either have engaged in those actions themselves, or want to. If someone (or a group) is screaming "all these bad actors are doing this to me!" but offers little evidence that it's happening, chances are they're the ones actually doing it, and trying to deflect scrutiny. 

Certainly, when I think of police intimidation to quell political dissent, the KMT has far more of a historical legacy. There is flimsy evidence for the existence of a "Green Terror", but the "White Terror" is a matter of historical fact. And frankly, even in modern times the KMT is not blameless.

However, a few cases did pop up after a search. Apparently some police showed up at a KMT think tank symposium saying protests could break out as the discussions were related to upcoming referendums, and protests were happening elsewhere. The KMT insists it wasn't a public event and only the press was notified, calling the excuse for the police presence "farfetched". In another incident, an elderly woman was visited by police after posting disinformation about the then-upcoming 2020 election.

Neither of these incidents, if true, looks great. However, the symposium was not stopped and no one was arrested or harmed. (I also couldn't find any proof that there's some DPP-led crackdown on freedom of expression). The woman was asked to explain her post at a police station in accordance with the Social Order Maintenance Act -- not great, as authorities paying someone a personal visit over something they've said sends a specific kind of message given Taiwan's political history -- but as far as I can tell was not arrested or further troubled. 

While the DPP is hardly perfect and their methods of handling disinformation potentially problematic, neither of these incidents definitively proves that the DPP is turning Taiwan into an "unfree democracy" or instituting a reign of "Green Terror". 


"Interfering with the judiciary" and "turning independent agencies green"

These accusations are more vague, but seem to refer to a variety of issues. This KMT News Network post is barely readable (no, it's not a machine translation) but provides little actual evidence of judicial interference, stopping at an insistence that it is happening. The KMT took a comment about the "Political Investigation Office" out of context in regards to the recent by-election between gangter Yen Ching-piao's son and DPP candidate Lin Jingyi -- there appears to be a lot of booming anger but very little actual evidence that anything illegal took place.

In terms of that "all-around greening of independent agencies", there have been a few accusations of nepotistic activity in various agencies, and an insistence that the NCC (the agency that revoked CTiTV's license, discussed above) has been "turned green" -- all with very little proof. 

I'm not saying that the DPP is perfect and incorruptible; that would be risible. All parties do unsavory things. However, when it comes to these specific accusations, I don't see much there.

"Revising the law to exonerate the corrupt former president"

This is getting very long, so I recommend reading the Taipei Times coverage of this issue if you want to know more. I'm not going to opine on whether the law being amended is actually unclear, or the types public funds in question are functionally the same, as I'm not an expert in that area. I'm also not going to spend a lot of time discussing Chen Shui-bian, as that's old news. 

Sure, it doesn't look great to change a law in a way that would exonerate someone convicted of corruption from your own party, although the KMT hardly has a spotless history when it comes to corruption and inappropriate use of funds (that's why the Ill-Gotten Assets Committee exists), and the article notes that they've done the same thing:

While saying that the KMT set a bad legal precedent in 2013 by amending the same article to exonerate former KMT legislator Yen Ching-piao (顏清標) from allegations of misappropriating public funds, the NPP said the DPP yesterday again set a bad precedent by forcibly passing the bill at the legislature.

 

Think what you like about Ma's accusation here, but remember that he's probably not too interested in discussing the KMT's similar political maneuvers.

"Using internal propaganda to mislead citizens and sowing hatred simply to follow the 'political correctness' of the so-called 'anti-China protection of Taiwan"

Look, honestly, this just sounds like mad ranting. There's no actual accusation here: Ma is just mad that society rejects his and the KMT's insistence that Taiwan is Chinese and should embrace a Chinese identity. They don't want to admit that the CCP is a threat to Taiwan and attempts at warming relations with them will only hand them opportunities to render Taiwan economically dependent on and politically tied to China, making a move away from unification more difficult. 

They simply cannot accept that Taiwanese do not think they are Taiwanese and that this angers China, and the DPP acknowledges and works with these facts. Acknowledging the general consensus on Taiwanese identity is apparently "propaganda" and being pragmatic on the threat of invasion from China is "politically correct" maneuvering to make Taiwan "anti-China". 

The KMT will never admit that their own forcing of Chinese identity -- including the attempted destruction of the Taiwanese language in favor of Mandarin -- onto an island they occupied was the "internal propaganda" they speak of. They'll never admit that the social change toward Taiwanese identity took place before the DPP took power in 2016, and in fact spiked when Taiwan fully democratized and grew throughout Ma's own administration. They'll never admit that China is a threat, not a friend. And certainly they'll never admit that Taiwanese by and large do not want to be part of China. They'll never admit that their own attempts to force Taiwanese to identify as Chinese failed, and are unlikely to succeed in the future.

There is literally nothing else there, so let's move on.

Furthermore, the coronavirus pandemic has shown over the past two years that the government has not done enough to procure vaccines, and their chaotic 'rapid screening' policies show that the government's "proactive deployment" is a falsehood.  DPP leaders and the so-called "1450" [the so-called DPP "Internet army", named for an amount of money said to be allocated toward cultivating it] attack and discredit any critics [the actual phrase is "smear red"].  

I discussed these particular distortions in my previous post, but I think they belong here as well, so I'll quote myself in green:

 

I'll admit that Taiwan's pandemic response has not been perfect in every aspect, at all times. There have been poor decisions, politically-motivated choices and lags. However, I'd describe the overall pandemic response as sterling -- no, gold standard. Anyone who thinks that Taiwan did a poor job handling the pandemic is straight-up full of it. All you need to do is look at how the entire rest of the world save possibly New Zealand handled it. Most accusations to the contrary distort what actually went on with the early vaccine purchases or blow up small mistakes into catastrophic ones. Most of it is based on lies.

As for the "1450" Internet troll army, well, I'm sure every party has people working on influencing public conversation. I won't pretend it's beyond the pale to say the DPP has one (and the KMT surely has one too -- I recall an ad surfacing years ago promising free bento boxes to attendees of a seminar on how to post online to bolster the KMT's image, but can't find a link).

That said, I can't find any proof that the "1450" army actually exists, and it would be very weird to allocate such funds through the Council of Agriculture, no? What's more, people decrying the "1450" have been known to misattribute the origin of the phrase to mean NT$1,450 paid to each Internet troll working for the DPP. 

Basically, there are a lot of accusations and very little proof here.

In sum, Taiwan actually has done an overall excellent job handling the pandemic. When you see people online praising that, it's because there's good reason to do so. If the KMT is sore that it's not very popular now, perhaps they should look at their own poor governance and attempts to force Taiwan toward closer relations with China. 

That is to say, there's nothing here but more distortion, including some statements that I suspect are outright lies.

When we shouted that the opposition should be treated kindly in order to establish core values in common on both sides of the strait, the ruling party is suppressing or even eliminating dissidents, while falling into "unfree democracy" and "elected dictatorship." 

 

Ah yes, because the KMT is renowned for always being so kind to the opposition. They were so friendly when they threw the Tangwai in jail. Their torture and interrogation techniques were employed in an attempt to establish core values in common! The KMT has never, ever attempted to "suppress or even eliminate dissidents", the White Terror is called that because it was just very bright outside for decades!

Obviously, there is no evidence -- I don't even have a link -- that the DPP is doing this. I discussed the inclusion of "cross strait common values" and the impossibility of an "elected dictatorship" in my previous post and won't repeat them here. 

Needless to say, this is the part of his argument that slides from plausible, debatable issue into lies and hokum.

Not just hokum, but more projection. Didn't the KMT spend decades during Martial Law lying about how the ideals of the Republic of China included democracy, while not instituting democracy beyond the local level in which every candidate was KMT-approved?

When someone like Ma bangs on and on about what the other guy is doing, you can be pretty sure he's done it, or he's aware that the KMT has. What was it that someone said on Twitter? Every KMT accusation is a confession? Like that.

Liars like Ma follow a second pattern, in my experience: they start out with claims that, while refutable, are based on real events or issues. You have to take time and energy to actually refute them. So if you know they're garbage, you ignore them, but if you don't, you might well believe it. In any case, at least some of them might be up for some kind of real debate, even if the actual claim made by that person is fundamentally flawed. 

Then, after you've been tired out, they go for vague accusations and outright bullshit. In other words, there's a veneer of plausibility to start out, which gradually drops as the case being made grows more and more deranged. 

If you ever find yourself reading something that starts out sounding pretty good, makes a few questionable claims that are nevertheless worthy of discussion, and then devolves down the road to Crazytown, be suspicious. This is a perfect example.

The Taiwan CDC is not going to rip your children from you (obviously)

Because there are still people in the foreign community who believe information that is straight-up wrong regarding new CDC guidelines, I wanted to provide some clarity as a follow up to my last post.

Due to a poorly-worded Focus Taiwan article, a lot of people are asserting that the new quarantine restrictions will require children over age 12 to isolate separately. Some are wording this as "implementing the new rules on taking children from families" when entering the country. You know, to add the maximum amount of fearmongering to this particular bit of disinformation. 

The actual article says this: 

Arrivals from outside the seven high-risk countries will now be required to stay in a quarantine hotel or a government quarantine facility at their own expense for 14 days, and also get a PCR test, the CECC said in a press conference.

The PCR test for them will be free, but Health Minister Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said the fee for a government quarantine center will be NT$2,000 (US$71.72) per night per person, though children aged 12 and under can stay either with their father or mother in a single room with no extra charge. 

This implies that parents may have to pay for the quarantine of children over age 12, but it says nothing about them being quarantined separately. 

It certainly doesn't imply that the heartless, child-hating CDC dramatically rips your children from your arms at the airport, whisking them to GOD KNOWS WHERE to be quarantined away from you for two entire weeks as you, the heartbroken parent, sob and rend your clothing helplessly as these agents of darkness violate your family. And, to pile offense upon offense, you will be required to pay for this, just as the families of executed political prisoners were charged for bullets in fascist regimes! 

This is preposterous on its face. Think about it: do you honestly believe the Taiwanese government would require that 13-year-olds quarantine separately from their parents? Is there any evidence beyond one poorly-worded article that there were ever official rules stating this?

(Yes, the article was based on a press release, but the press release doesn't say your children will be taken from you, either.)

Because this is still getting traction, however, someone called 1922 and their answer was a very clear "obviously not". Children 18 and under can quarantine with parents (I don't know if they are required to, or if you'd be allowed to arrange a separate room for your 16-year-old who will probably be just fine without you. I don't think it matters.) 

If you arrive from a "red list" country like the UK, you tell the appropriate CDC worker at the airport who is in your group and what they need -- so if your child has special needs, you will have the opportunity to point this out to the government as well -- and they will arrange the accommodation for you. If you arrive from any other country, you have to make the arrangements yourself. But again, nobody is going to tear your children from you. 

In fact, the rule that adults cannot quarantine together is not new either: they've been expected to isolate separately for months. And yet, people are still saying this rule is "new" and "unfair". It's neither.

In the past this separation could include a home quarantine (there were rules about what sort of housing arrangements were allowed). However, people skirted those rules, and in a few cases violations caused local COVID infections. That's why the only new rule is that all quarantines must be in hotels or government facilities, and arrivals from certain countries with a prevalence of the Delta variant must quarantine at government facilities. 

All anyone ever needed to do to confirm that these "family separation at the border" policies were complete and utter fake news was call 1922. They even speak English. 

So please, if you are still hearing accusations like this, shut it down. If you believe it, stop. If someone insists this is an "official" rule or regulation, inform them that they are not correct. If you are an admin in a social media group where accusations like this are proliferating, end it by warning people about disinformation. 

I am going to give the people spreading this information the benefit of the doubt that they are not intentionally trying to stir up trouble. They read an article that wasn't perfectly clear, made some very wrong conclusions and discussed their worries with others. That amplified their fears and echoed their wrong conclusions back at them, until "children under 12 can stay...at no extra charge" became "they are going to take our children from us at the airport!" 

It is possible to unintentionally spread fake news, or say things in the most incendiary way -- OUR CHILDREN! TORN FROM US! -- without realizing what one is doing. But now that you know, please stop. It amplifies the incorrect information and results in real actions which look bad for the foreign community, such as endlessly contacting the CDC to demand that they accommodate your return the way you would prefer. 

Yes, it is true that if you don't arrive from a "red list" country that you will have to pay for your own quarantine as home quarantine is no longer allowed. That makes sense given the rise of the Delta variant and the impossibility of perfect enforcement. Yes, this does mean that if you chose to travel, you're now likely on the hook if you want to return. However, I urge everyone to consider that in New Zealand, you don't get to choose your quarantine facility, but chances are you have to pay for it regardless. You also have to apply for a place: there's a reason why they have special categories for urgent or time-sensitive requests: not everyone gets a spot quickly. 

And not every country would allow you to return -- or allow you to leave: 

Australia maintains a near universal travel ban on all non-citizens coming to the country. And even Australian citizens living abroad don't have an easy time entering. They need to fight for a limited number of plane seats per week to get into the country and must serve a mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine upon arrival. Australians in countries deemed at high-risk for COVID-19 like India, are completely banned from returning home, and face potential prison time if they attempt to circumvent the ban. (In May, Australia launched some repatriation flights to bring select citizens home from India, such as those with medical conditions.)

Australia has also imposed an exit ban that bars most of its citizens from leaving the country. A rightwing think tank called Libertyworks challenged Australia's outbound ban in court, but a federal judge dismissed the case earlier this month.

Compared to that, can you honestly say that Taiwan doesn't sound eminently reasonable, allowing citizens and legal residents to travel and return? Although I would support fee waivers for people undertaking emergency travel, does the overarching policy for Taiwan truly sound unfair in comparison? 

From Focus Taiwan:

Each room will be equipped with internet accessibility, television and other amenities, including three meals per day per person, the CECC said.... 

When questioned why passengers from high-risk countries can enjoy free accommodation, but those from lower-risk countries have to pay for their accommodation, Chen said only that it was compulsory for people arriving from high-risk countries to stay in a government facility, and therefore they should not have to pay, while arrivals from other areas had the option to stay at quarantine hotels, which offer a lot of choice.

 

I completely understand the frustration or worry over facing a bill you weren't expecting upon return to Taiwan. Obviously some would be concerned about the logistics of such a stay. Of course, it will be difficult, and not everyone has the money. However, it's the right call for the good of the country even if it inconveniences you personally. 

For those who chose non-emergency travel during a pandemic, you took a gamble. You rolled the dice. That was your choice. You lost that bet. I understand it's annoying, but it was your bet to take. Please don't pretend that you have the right to take any gamble you want, without any of the risks. The CDC was never your insurance company against making a bad bet on the travel game right now. 

I have no problem with people venting their frustrations online. Affording the bill, managing children in a single room for two weeks, arranging pet care for the extra time away: these are all legitimate annoyances. 

However, that's not the same as spreading fake news. "They're going to take our children!" crosses a big fat red line.

Allow me to be harsh: a lot of people got used to Taiwan getting an A in pandemic prevention, and are now angry that it's getting perhaps a B, when the rest of the world got a D or F. Now, they think the Taiwanese government is somehow responsible for accommodating their personal travel choices. Some are spreading fear and straight-up fake news, because "I don't want to pay for quarantine thanks to travel I chose to take during a pandemic" is less captivating than "they're going to take our children!" 

Of course, given the way fake news spreads,  the "they're going to take our children!" angle had legs even after "we shouldn't have to pay for quarantine" and "they should let us quarantine at home" died out. It was more important to be outraged than to just call 1922 and ask.

It needs to stop. Now. It makes the foreign community look bad. It unfairly compares an annoying but eminently reasonable policy with the very real human rights violations that occur in other countries. This is not family separation at the US-Mexico border or asylum seekers to Australia being sent to Nauru or Christmas Island.

Frankly, it's embarrassing. Stop. 

What is going on with the KMT's foreign language social media people?

Earlier today, activist and journalist Roy Ngerng wrote a fairly anodyne tweet about how the Tsai government had "built Taiwan's relationship with other democracies" so that Japan and the US were aiding Taiwan quickly, without Taiwan having to surrender its sovereignty or dignity to China. 

The Kuomintang, on their official account, responded the way a CCP sock puppet might -- as you can see from the cover photo.

It's already in the local news, where you can also see some of the more polite replies. 

At first, I believed it was most likely a trigger-happy intern who had forgotten to log in to their personal account and accidentally went after Ngerng on the KMT's official account. That in itself should be enough to get them fired. At best, it meant that this was the kind of person the KMT employed: willing to spew hateful word salad co-opting the social justice language of the left to make nonsense arguments, and not able to make a particularly coherent case.

What's more, the language read exactly like the CCP's United Front and fifty-cent bots, as many pointed out:

The entire comment is incoherent -- calling Ngerng, who is not white, a white supremacist for talking about help that Japan (a non-white country) and the US gave to Taiwan. It's not worth analyzing very deeply, but the part about anime in particular is as questionable as it is incoherent. There are entire subreddits full of people who believe all anime is pornography (so, My Neighbor Totoro is...huh?), but even if that were true, it's irrelevant here. 

There's another less popular line of thinking that anime is some sort of artistic way for Japanese, who want to fantasize about being "more Western" without having to say so, to enjoy and imagine themselves as having "Westernized" bodies and forms through anime. This could what be what our questionable tweeter meant: that one might answer "you're accusing me of white supremacy, but Japan's not white", with a prepackaged "they wish they were white and that's white supremacy, because anime!" retort.

The whole argument is of course pure bullshit, but it could be what he meant (I am almost certain the rogue tweeter is a 'he', because the entire International Department is male, as we'll discuss below). It sounds like the sort of pseudo-intellectual trash one might pick up in the same discussion spaces where one picks up phrasing like "muh Japan".

In any case, that's the best possible scenario. 

At worst, it implied that the KMT hired one or several people to manage its social media whose other job was to operate horrible troll accounts that spew this kind of rhetoric in an attempt to ruin any attempt at meaningful discourse while being completely impossible to argue with. This is an intentional tactic that political interests pay for -- especially the CCP -- and it is so toxic and oxygen-sucking, it's like trying to duel with quicksand.

I'm not sure it matters if there is one person or many working for the KMT to engage in this sort of discourse online. I'm not sure it matters if this was meant to be a personal tweet posted from the wrong account. Whoever wrote that tweet has exposed themselves as having a vicious, angry and problematic personality who is willing to deal with people in the exact same way as a pro-CCP troll might. The KMT hired them anyway.

What's more, the KMT has previously made statements in support of US-Taiwan ties and thanked Japan for their donation of over a million vaccines. So, such a jaw-dropping, unprofessional response by an official organization to a fairly benign tweet is...eyebrow-raising. It just doesn't make sense. 

Within 45 minutes the tweet was gone, and a poorly-worded "sorry if you were offended" apology posted by the official account. That reply was also deleted and re-posted:

To be fair, the original "apology" had a typo in it, and the new post fixed that. The goal might not have been to delete all the angry replies. That was the effect, however.

This got me wondering: what is going on in the International Affairs department of the KMT? Because either they're running a whole online troll operation, there's a massive internal tug-of-war, or they have at least one reckless person who can't do their job properly, and who holds some pretty horrifying views. 

Of course, it's not hard to find out who works in this department of the KMT. Lee Ta-jung is the director, and is associated with Tamkang University. There's nothing odd there. Shen Cheng-hao doesn't have much going on either. He appears here with his colleague (whom I'll talk about in a minute) on a show about how the youth feel about the US election, but frankly, I haven't watched the whole thing. Ho Chih-yung has ties to the National Policy Research Foundation and National Tsinghua University. Although I doubt I'd agree with any of these guys -- and yes, they are all men -- on political issues, they don't seem like people who would log into the KMT's official Twitter account to incoherently harass a journalist over an anodyne tweet.

Then there's Tang Cheng-wei. Here he is -- again in the local media ETToday -- making sexist remarks about President Tsai on a Taiwan News article about her winning the John McCain prize. He insulted her by calling her a virgin, and a loyal dog of the US. Seeing as until very recently the US seemed to prefer the KMT, that's an odd comment. He also insulted others who disagreed with him:

It's interesting to me that he wonders why people would bring up the KMT, when he works (or worked) for the KMT. 

Anyway, he continues with his anti-West, anti-foreigner talk:

He also implied that respected writer and analyst J. Michael Cole is a "Canadian spy" hired by President Tsai for that reason (Cole stopped running Thinking Taiwan when Tsai was elected, and there is no indication that he used his previous intelligence training in that role. He is open about his previous intelligence career).

This is strange disinformation to spread by someone working for the KMT, as the KMT insists that the DPP is the one spreading fake news.

Update 6/12/2021: Interestingly, this is all breaking now, even though his comments were made a month ago. The local reports don't connect him to Thursday's tweet, however, and say he stopped working for the KMT in March to do military service. That's odd. These are all from the past few days -- you can find them yourself if you'd like. I've included a screenshot to show you how recent all of this news is:

The only report of his comments about Tsai that dates from the actual event just calls him a "former" consultant and offers no other details. While I am fairly sure when I read that article two days ago it didn't say he was a "former" anything, I could be mistaken. It's also possible my memory is correct but the writer was wrong. The article about the "International War Room" is from February. 

I cannot offer any interpretation of this; I'll just leave it here for you.

Furthermore, Tang's anti-foreigner behavior is interesting, for someone who wrote at great length about how great America is on his own Facebook page in 2018: 

...I'm not going to bother with screenshots of the whole thing.

America is a diverse and multicultural country, while also being majority-white. How does this square with his anti-foreigner comments a month ago?

Remember, this person is (or was) partly responsible for KMT outreach to foreigners. Why would the KMT hire someone who hates white people to help them try to appeal to the rest of the world? I mean, I get that white supremacy is a massive problem, but if your goal is international outreach, this isn't how you do it.

He mentioned in the video above that he's a Trump supporter. This should not matter in relation to the issue at hand, but Trump himself is associated with white supremacy and "America First!" rhetoric, so it's a mismatch with his anti-foreigner, "loyal dog to the US" stance on President Tsai if he supports a strong US otherwise. 

This is a person the KMT chose to take on in their International Affairs department. This is a person they entrusted with part of their goal of international and foreign-language outreach. 

A known (former?) employee of the KMT making online comments about the president of the nation -- childish, trollish, sexist and highly inappropriate given his job -- should be enough to raise questions. 

Of course, Tang has the same right to freedom of expression as anyone else. Nobody is going to arrest him over his horrible comments about Tsai. But freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, and others have just as much right to point out that his personal comments don't look good when you consider his job. If I go online as Jenna and say "X", and someone writes about how the woman behind Lao Ren Cha said "X", that's all within the bounds of freedom of expression. The same applies here.

To be clear, we don't know who was behind the offensive and frankly uncalled-for and line-crossing tweet to Ngerng; perhaps it truly was an intern, and if so, I can only hope that that intern has been fired already. That tweet happened on Thursday, so whoever wrote it still had access to the KMT's official account just a few days ago. That is not acceptable.

However, regardless of who wrote that tweet today, one thing is clear: the KMT has in its employ at least one (and possibly several) highly problematic people who are causing multiple embarrassments, and who perhaps are not the best choices for communicating with the English-speaking public or representing the party. If they want to be taken seriously as the opposition, and maintain a dignified online presence, they really must do better than this. 

Today's tweet -- whomever wrote it -- crossed a line. Tang's comments about Tsai last month crossed a line. How many lines must be crossed before they address what is obviously a recurring problem?

The KMT desperately wants to be rubber to the DPP's glue, but it's not working

To be frank, I don't really want to write about the KMT. I'd rather talk about the re-election campaign of President Tsai and what she's doing on that front. Sadly, other than a new song (which isn't bad as Taiwanese campaign songs go and intentionally references the band's 2014 hit inspired by the Sunflower Movement, Island Sunrise), some bomber jackets and holding the line she's taken since 2016, there isn't much to say on that front. She hasn't come out with any exciting policy proposals or new platforms that I've seen. "Hold the line and take no risks" seems to be her entire campaign strategy. Frankly, while I'd like to hear more from her about what she'll do once re-elected, this isn't a bad tactic, even though it doesn't give me much blog fodder.

So, instead let's talk about the way the KMT is trying ever so hard to turn the Su Chii-cherng fake news/suicide case into a big scandal for the DPP, and why it probably won't work. Sigh.

For those who don't know what this is about, here's a rundown of events, mostly from this source. It's long and involved, so feel free to skip anything you already know - I'm putting the whole story here because  it's one of the advantages of blogging that I can go long-form if I want and tell a fuller story. I'll put the whole thing in a different color so you'll clearly see where I pick up with commentary.

* * * 

Last year, posts on PTT insinuated that the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Osaka (Taiwan's de facto embassy) wasn't providing sufficient assistance to Taiwanese nationals in Japan affected by Typhoon Jebi, in contrast to the assistance that China was giving its citizens. New Bloom reports that the Chinese consulate 'stepped in' to help Taiwanese nationals; other news sources say that the inadequate response of Taiwan was merely contrasted poorly with that of China. The News Lens reports that some Taiwanese apparently feigned Chinese nationality to gain assistance from the Chinese consulate. I'm not sure which version is more accurate.

It doesn't matter much, the truth is that the Japanese government arranged all evacuation assistance, and rejected China's request to send in buses to aid its citizens (although representatives of one Chinese airline filled at least one bus with only Chinese nationals). The Chinese consulate reported falsely that they had arranged transport and food for their citizens and were willing to include Taiwanese citizens who "identified as Chinese" (according to an interview with a Chinese traveler). Global Times, a WeChat post and other Chinese media spread this story.

It was then picked up by Taiwanese social media, where the Taiwanese consulate was criticized for not doing enough for its own citizens, to the point that some pretended to be Chinese. Criticism at first focused on Taiwanese envoy to Japan and 2008 presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), who tried to explain the situation but whose statement didn't get much traction on social media.

This criticism morphed into defending Hsieh and placing the blame on the head of the Osaka consulate, Su Chii-cherng (蘇啟誠). Remember, of course, that Su hadn't done anything wrong, as the entire story was fake to begin with. Su committed suicide soon after. It's difficult to say if the fake news blizzard precipitated his suicide, but an investigation was formed (despite the KMT insisting that the DPP and Ministry of Foreign Affairs were "not interested in investigating" the event), and online personality Slow Yang (楊蕙如) was indicted for not only public insult and hiring someone to post disinformation, but for those posts leading to Su's death. Su's widow says the criticism and his suicide are related, although his suicide note did not specifically mention the incident.

Despite Su's family and some media reporting that the government was going to reprimand and demote Su, MoFA says it had no plans to do so.

The person Yang was indicted for hiring was Tsai Fu-ming (蔡福明), although it's not quite clear who made what posts, and I'm not sure it matters much. Yang had previously been close to the DPP and Frank Hsieh in particular, having previously worked for his election campaign. There's also a furor over a company she owns being paid by the Taipei City government - money she was awarded thanks to her ties to DPP and specifically Frank Hsieh-tied city councilors. Suffice it to say, the DPP and Yang have had ties in the past.

Yang is well-known in Taiwan, as an online personality, mostly on PTT. Her reputation, however, is not great - I've talked to a few people about this and the general consensus is that she's always been an opportunist and purveyor of questionable content.

KMT politicians pounced on this, insisting that Yang was a paid troll-master of the DPP who was tasked with spreading fake news and that the accounts used to spread fake news can be traced back to her, as well as to a DPP legislator's office. I'm not quite clear on who is alleging what, but it seems that the Taipei District Prosecutor's Office is indicting Yang for her role in creating these posts, whether by her or by the online troll she allegedly hired, with the KMT embellishing the story by insisting that the DPP was ultimately funding the whole thing.

Last week, KMT politicians held a protest outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) shouting "MoFA kills people!" and insisting that Frank Hsieh and Foreign Minister Joseph Wu both "offer an explanation" and resign. A scuffle ensued, with the KMT lawmakers insisting they were injured due to rough treatment by the police. Video later surfaced of legislator Arthur Chen of knocking off an officer's cap before pushing her. Two other politicians, Chen Yu-jen and Lin Yi-hua (Lin happens to be running for Chiang Nai-hsin's old legislative seat in my district and is something of a rising star in the KMT) got their fingers caught in a door or gate, and Chen apparently fainted. Both went to National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) emergency room for treatment.

Their seemingly (ok, definitely) exaggerated reactions, and those of KMT figures insisting they'd been seriously injured, garnered much online mockery - with Han Kuo-yu and other KMTers visiting Chen in the hospital, video of Chen walking slowly out of the hospital as though dazed some time later, as well as Lin Yi-hua insisting she'd been badly hurt and required hospitalization (and apparently limping pathetically and lying on a stretcher like a trauma victim long after the fact - when the worst of their injuries was getting their fingers caught in a door). 

NTUH was accused by some of giving priority in the queue to politicians (which they denied), and the politicians themselves were accused of abusing national healthcare resources.

DPP legislator Wang Ting-yu then released a video showing at least one person - seemingly Chen though I can't tell, personally - deliberately sticking their fingers in the door at MoFA. MoFA has since filed a complaint against the KMT legislators. 

* * *

tl;dr:

The KMT is screaming about DPP paying "online armies" to spread fake news and then being injured by police when protesting at MoFA, despite there being not much evidence that the DPP was behind the posts, and video clearly showing that the KMT politicians at MoFA were acting aggressively and more than likely exaggerating their injuries.

Got all that?

Great. 

* * *

What strikes me about this whole story is how clearly desperate it is on the part of the KMT.

While it makes sense that the Chinese consulate would spread fake news and Chinese media would pick it up - after all, that's what the Chinese government does - it doesn't make a lot of sense that the DPP would pay someone to spread that news in Taiwan, and then make posts defending Frank Hsieh and criticizing Su under the assumption that the fake news was accurate. 

It doesn't even make sense that the DPP or Hsieh would pay online 'armies' to defend them in this fashion from fake news spread by others, when Hsieh had already released a statement clarifying that the entire story was false. Neither the DPP nor Hsieh are perfect, and they do make PR mistakes, but it doesn't take a tactical genius to see that the truth of the matter would have come out soon enough and if anything, it would just make China look bad, which is always good for the DPP. It should be obvious that adding another layer of fake news to existing fake news is a bad idea.

I also have it on reasonably good authority (not firsthand, but a source I trust anyhow - make of that what you will) that if anyone paid Slow Yang for these alleged actions - which someone or some entity probably did - it wasn't the DPP or Frank Hsieh. You don't have to believe me as it's third- or fourth-hand gossip by now, but I want to put it out there anyway.

Then there's the absurdity of being so outraged by so little proof - it seems likely to me that Yang did do what she's been accused of, although that's just an opinion, but there's almost nothing there to definitively link the DPP to her actions. There's a story concocted out of disparate threads that doesn't make a lot of sense when you put it together, a few old relationships between a person of questionable morals and some DPP figures, and assumptions made based on online behavior that all political parties engage in, and it's become a full-blown conspiracy theory. 

And, of course, there's the conflating of Su's suicide ostensibly being due to facing "humiliation" and a demotion at work, and being humiliated by social media posts. Those are not the same thing at all and although the indictment indicates that the prosecutor's office believe the posts played a role, it's not at all clear from KMT accusations that that's the case. 

The KMT is implicated in a much more thoroughly substantiated allegation of fake news and disinformation linked to Chinese interference online and in the media, with the Association of Taiwan Journalists, the National Security Bureau, foreign analysts and more weighing in. Remember, pretty much every Taiwanese media source accused, with proof, of receiving money from the CCP is tied to the KMT. Every time money finds its way from China to Taiwanese political figures, it's the KMT that's implicated. Every time China spreads disinformation, it favors the KMT.

Considering that, it's a bit rich for them to accuse the DPP of doing the same thing, but with far less evidence to back up their claims.

Or rather, it makes perfect sense, if they want to deflect people's attention from their own disinformation, including blatant untruths spoken by their own presidential candidate.

The KMT's authoritarian roots and the DPP's more activist roots also come into play. It's not just DPP tactics that make them look like the party that's friendlier to activists - they actually are. As a result, they tend to be known for passionate rallies and protests. Having never held full power (both the executive and legislative branches) before 2016, they were usually the ones banging on the doors to the halls of power - halls usually occupied, until recently, by denizens of the KMT.

The KMT has repeatedly tried to harness that same social movement and activist energy, and mostly failing, because it's simply not in their party's roots or ethos. From astroturfed "social movements" and faux protests right up to this spectacle, they've never been victims and so they suck at playing the part.

Let's not forget that it was the KMT who routinely brutalized democracy activists (the people who went on to found the DPP) and who caused real injury to social movement activists just in the past few years - those water cannons, the police beating students with clubs? That was on the orders of a KMT administration. People involved in the democratization movement ended up injured, in jail or dead. The perpetrators of the White Terror? The KMT.

So when they want to claim the same 'cred', and try to turn it around and scream that now that the DPP is in power they are engaging in the same tactics, the best they can do is stage a whole long-winded spectacle around a few minor injuries - injuries that the people involved managed to help inflict on themselves, looking at the video. It's just another way that the KMT takes proven or well-founded accusations against themselves and tries to say it's the DPP who are really doing those things, à la the "Green Terror".

But, as the old rejoinder goes, if there's really a Green Terror, where are the bodies? Where are the missing people and where is the extensive network of shadowy military prisons?

The KMT may desperately wish that they were rubber and the DPP glue - and whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you - but they're not. They keep chucking things off of rubber and watching them boomerang right back on them. (Also I think Ma Ying-jeou might literally be made of glue - he has the right personality and just looks so melty.)

In other words, if you want to know what the KMT has been up to, looking at what they accuse the DPP of doing is a good place to start. 

Anatomy of a Sunflower Hit Job

I wasn't going to blog about this, because it should be well-known that the South China Morning Post (SCMP) has gone from being a relatively free publication to one that seems to be little more than a Chinese government mouthpiece, and therefore little in it is worth paying attention to anymore.

However, at the encouragement of friends, and also because ignoring fake news as unworthy of our time to refute is one reason why one of the biggest douchelords of his generation ended up as President (barf) of the Unites States of America. Some things shouldn't be given any oxygen to grow, but others need to be held up to the light so everybody can see exactly how the people who create purposefully preposterous content are aiming to run democratic institutions into the ground to give their own agenda more seeming legitimacy.

Also, I did a few Google searches and this article is quite high up in the results, meaning it's time to tear it down and take it apart.

So, let's take this stinking heap of garbage for a spin, shall we?

FYI, as I already wrote out a lot of this where many of you may have already seen it, I'm going to cut and paste quite a bit.

I can think of at least five things wrong with this piece of garbage article.

First of all, the article states that "four" "former student leaders" took jobs in China. Since we don't know who these people are, they could be any one of the 300-or-so people who occupied the legislature:

Chang claims at least four former student leaders are working on the mainland. One works for a computer game developer in Shenzhen, earning the equivalent of HK$12,390 a month. 

I have a few (unverified - this is harder to source than I thought and even the BBC says the numbers are not available for how many young Taiwanese are going to China for work) numbers for you.

Someone I know pointed out that a little under 300 people occupied the legislature in 2014. Here we have stats saying 60% of young Taiwanese intend to leave Taiwan for work (how many would go to China is unclear), 73% of young Taiwanese saying they would be willing to consider jobs in China (how many would take them is again unclear), and nearly 60% of Taiwanese working abroad are in China, so we have enough data to know that it's common. Many go, more than half are planning to go abroad, more than half of them are likely to end up in China, and a large majority would be willing to at least consider it.

Therefore, if only 4 out of 300 occupiers (that's not even counting the supporters who camped out outside) took jobs in China, that would be well below the national average, not above it. So the real question is, why isn't that the story? Why is "four" painted as this big deal, when it's actually a very tiny number when compared to the general population? Why are so few former Sunflowers going to China to work?

That, right there, is fake news for you. Taking a number that actually shows how rarely former Sunflowers go to work in China, and therefore how possible it is to build a life and be pro-Taiwan without moving across the strait, and making it seem instead as though our former student heroes betrayed their cause. The whole thing is marketed so that the truth looks very different from what it actually is.

Secondly. as some of my friends have noted - and I obviously agree - the piece attempts to paint the Sunflowers as an "anti-China" movement:

So what’s the big deal? Plenty of Taiwanese live and work on the mainland [sic]. The Sunflower protesters, who once occupied Taiwan’s Legislative and Executive Yuan, were opposed to closer economic ties with the mainland [sic]. More specifically, they successfully fought in 2014 against the ratification of a key trade pact negotiated between the then ruling Kuomintang and Beijing.

However, that's not what the Sunflowers were about at all. The point of the protest was not the CSSTA (服貿) bill itself, but the way the bill was undemocratically rammed through the legislature with essentially no oversight, with most people not even knowing what the contents of the bill were (because they were purposely kept in the dark), a culmination of a number of undemocratic moves then-President Ma made in the lead-up to his biggest mistake.

Certainly, however, Alex Lo wants you to believe that this was an "anti-China" protest, because it's fundamental to the Chinese government's agenda that readers believe this, especially readers in China whose rage at students in Taiwan "hating" them would serve the CCP well in their quest to ramp up angry, jingoistic nationalism as a buttress for their power. It is also useful to remind Taiwanese citizens who did not agree with the Sunflowers of all the lies their own domestic pro-KMT news was telling them: they were on about "anti-China" this and "they just hate the KMT" that at the time, and some people believed it (hey, copraphiliacs exist in every culture, guys). It helps China to rekindle all of that anger years later. Keep those fires stoked and all.

I think we can safely say most were not in favor of greater integration with China, economically or otherwise, however, and many likely remain so. Once again, though, that wasn't the point of the protest. People who might well have supported the bill had it been deliberated and passed democratically did participate. Plenty of people who might have voted for the KMT did, too. As did plenty of social conservatives.

This is similar to most of the Hong Kong student leaders probably being in favor of HK sovereignty, but it's possible to be a pro-Hong Kong activist without necessarily advocating Hong Kong independence.

So it is quite possible to have been a Sunflower and yet later take a job in China without being a hypocrite. I wouldn't think it terribly common, and I can imagine why supporters of the movement might feel disappointed, but a deeper understanding of the movement would hopefully lead to a rational denouement in that thought arc.

Again, however, it is Alex Lo's and the Chinese government's agenda for you to believe that it would be hypocritical on its face for a former Sunflower to work in China. If you are going to be angry in all the ways that best serve the CCP agenda, a dose of rage at supposed hypocrisy is an even greater spark to light that fire than simply bringing back the old (false) "anti-China/anti-KMT" trope.

What's more, if a Sunflower supporter were to read this and buy its premise - possible, as not every supporter necessarily fully understood what the movement was about - a sense of being betrayed or a loss of faith in leaders formerly admired can also only help China. Their goal is not only to cause Taiwanese to lose faith in their democratic institutions (making them more susceptible, in their plan, to accepting undemocratic Chinese rule) but also in their "heroes" and role models. It serves China if pro-Taiwan voters and activists feel their strongest voices in the new generation have "betrayed" them and are now not worth listening to.

Thirdly,  there's this:

If Chang Yu-hua is right, several leaders of the so-called Sunflower student movement in Taiwan have now graduated from university and found work on the mainland [sic].

(Also, why "so-called"? That was what it was called. That or the 318 movement). 

One of the island’s [sic - it's an island, yes, but more importantly, it's a country] most influential pundits (really?), Chang said on a TV programme that the former student leaders should apologise for their past actions.

That's one excerpt, but throughout the article it uses the term "leaders" but never names a single person.

Alex Lo, by saying "leaders" without saying who those so-called "leaders" were, makes it sound like Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) and Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), among others, are working as, I dunno, game developers in Shenzhen or something. It sounds as though the core Sunflowers, those with the greatest visibility, those who went to court over what happened, have turned tail. It never says that outright but casual readers will immediately connect the words "Sunflower leaders" with the most visible people in the movement. There will be people who will come to believe something the article never says, and when discussing it with their friends, say just that. It's not a big leap to go from "Sunflower leaders working in China" to "hey did you read that article about how Lin Fei-fan and Chen Wei-ting are working in China?"

Of course, even cursory research will show that this is not the case. All you have to do is check the public Facebook page of either of these two most visible leaders, to know that neither is working, nor has any intention of working, in China. You don't even need me to tell you what they're up to - check for yourself! It's all right there online! Neither has been particularly secretive about the general outlines of their current activities or near-future plans.

Furthermore, it wouldn't be possible for them to do so, as both are banned from the country (in fact, pretty much every visible "leader" is most likely banned so using that term is incorrect on its face).

Knowing, however, that most people won't look into the facts and it makes a much more powerful fake news story to implant in people's minds that not just any Sunflowers but Sunflower leaders have been brought down to working in China - that gives people something to talk about. The purpose here is not just to make the Sunflowers look bad unjustly, but to make it look like the so-called "change" is happening even among the most ardent participants.

Note that Alex Lo doesn't name the so-called "leaders". Since it's not clear who these people are, it is not at all clear that they were "leaders" at all. The movement had hundreds of active participants, thousands if you count the supporters who camped out outside. Not every one of them is a "leader" but any one of them could have taken a job in China, which again would not be hypocritical. So what?

This is a key facet of fake news - implying heavily, drawing susceptible readers to a certain conclusion, but never actually stating it outright so it can't be fact-checked. We can't check to what extent any of the people Chang was referencing, if they exist at all, "led" the movement because we don't know who they are. Our minds are led to fill in the gaps in all the wrong ways.

My fourth point is related to this:  it's not clear who this Alex Lo person is talking about, stopping at "four" people with scant detail on just one, it is entirely possible the "scoop" is fabricated (even if some former Sunflowers did take jobs in China, that doesn't mean that Chang Yu-hua - the originator of this "news" - knows about it necessarily). In fact, I'd say it's highly likely that it was just made up, with the people involved assuming that someone must have gone to work in China so it probably wasn't "false", even if it was a lie to call it a "scoop" (and it probably was).

That's yet another facet of fake news: making up a news story to further your agenda with plenty of assumed or fabricated facts, figuring that somewhere, somehow, there must be an example of what you are talking about if you are called on it. It's the "but rape culture isn't real because some women lie about being raped" of Taiwan news (yes, it does occasionally happen, on very rare occasions, that a woman has lied about being raped. But the person saying that most likely doesn't know of any cases off the top of their heads, and is just assuming that, if confronted on that factoid, they can find an example quickly enough).

It wouldn't be the first time anti-Taiwan news had made something up out of whole cloth, not said outright that it was true, but implied it in such a way as to cause people to believe it. My favorite example is the person I know who deeply believed that President Tsai had called up a pro-KMT talk show (something-something 酸辣湯, I don't remember the full name because they're a bunch of fucking clowns and I can't be bothered) and told them that once she took office they were no longer allowed to criticize her, and if they did she'd take them off the air. They were even crying and hugging each other saying "this is our last episode!"

This is absolutely ridiculous, and of course it wasn't true, but my acquaintance believed it.

It wasn't even hard to find out it wasn't true - if such a phone call was made, evidence would most likely exist. If it existed, that would have been a huge news story, not only a very damaging one but one that could have cost Tsai her job. Whoever made it up clearly didn't think very deeply about how freedom of speech laws - yes, laws, so a president violating them would be breaking the law - work in Taiwan, or assumed the audience wouldn't. It's not a hard assumption to make: most of that show's viewers are KMT supporters. The KMT is the party that suppressed free speech in Taiwan for nearly half the twentieth century. If you still support it, well, you clearly think doing so was, on some level, acceptable enough that a president could do it without it creating a huge scandal or causing that president to lose legitimacy even among her supporters. After all, the former leaders of their preferred party did it, and they still support that party.

Anyway, I digress. The point is, it's possible to fact-check this stuff but those who publish it assume people won't.

And you know what? I'm sure some former Sunflowers did take jobs in China. In fact, I've had several people say they can confirm that. I'm not sure to what extent these people were "leaders" (because, again, the leaders are mostly or entirely banned from China), but it doesn't matter, as doing what they did was not hypocritical.

In fact, that some Sunflowers did do this says more about problems in Taiwanese corporate culture (low pay, long hours, few perks, overbearing management) than about any virtues of China or any problems in Taiwanese politics.

And finally, by pinning the whole thing on a report by some other guy, SCMP - which is hardly a bastion of press freedom - is basically washing its hands of any culpability or being accused of "fake news". "I'm just reporting on what Chang said!" is the easy excuse. Another key strategy of fake news - write something from an uncredible source that, even if discredited, can be blamed on that source. "I just heard it from _______!" - but of course when _________ and you, and some other guy after you, and some dude who links to that, and another news source that picks up on it, and the Chinese state-run media who likes what you wrote because it serves their agenda, all publish it, it will look like these "facts" are coming from a number of sources when in fact they originated with just one: Chang Yu-hua, who, as one friend of mine put it, "if his words were worth listening to, shit can be eaten".

And then, if anyone bothers to refute it all as I am doing,  you have a bevy of competing sources which makes it look as though the two sides of the so-called "debate" are roughly matched, and therefore both deserve equal consideration, meaning facts don't matter and distortion of those facts is as equally valid as a clear interpretation of them.

That's how it works, and that's China's game - make it seem as though the CCP-approved perspective is, if not the correct one, than one that is on equal footing with other interpretations and deserves the same legitimacy. Because SCMP is owned by Alibaba (a huge company that is a big supporter of the Chinese government), and Alex Lo is a pro-China mouthpiece, they are happily playing along.