TAIPEI — Taiwan's outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen plans to flee in a US plane if war erupts with China, according to an unsubstantiated report first published in 2021 and echoed in the run-up to the island's January 2024 general election. Another story said Tsai had given her confidantes VIP 'runaway' passes.
The stories framed Taiwan's military drills as escape rehearsals for Taiwan's outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen.TAIPEI — Taiwan's outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen plans to flee in a US plane if war erupts with China, according to an unsubstantiated report first published in 2021 and echoed in the run-up to the island's January 2024 general election.
The organisation found over 400 stories portraying the military exercises, including the annual Han Kuang drills, as rehearsals for Taiwan's leadership to desert, in what IORG said appeared to be a concerted attempt by Beijing to undermine the ruling Democratic Progressive Party . The analysis of text articles and videos published between April 2021 and January 13, 2024, was conducted with data-processing technologies that enabled IORG to identify the origins of certain narratives and related keywords.
Discussion of these stories by opposition politicians and on social media also rose during these periods of elevated tensions, the analysis showed. The presidential office separately told Reuters that China was engaged in "disinformation warfare" against the island. IORG's research spanned more than 1,300 Chinese official news outlets; over 500,000 accounts on YouTube, Weibo, and Douyin — the Chinese version of TikTok; and more than 1.2 million Chinese-language Facebook pages.Of the 439 articles published between April 2021 and Jan 13 that framed Taiwan's military drills as escape rehearsals for Ms Tsai, 110 originated with Beijing-based outlets, including the overseas editions of People's Daily and Global Times.
The newspaper called a US military C-17 transport plane, which had visited Taiwan that month, a "runaway plane" for Taiwan's leadership.
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