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      Experts See a Message in Chinese Balloons Flying Over Taiwan

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      Some analysts see the objects as a calculatedly ambiguous reminder to voters that Beijing is watching.A surge in sightings of balloons from China flying over Taiwan has drawn the attention of the island’s military and struck some experts as a calculatedly ambiguous warning to voters weeks before its presidential election.Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense has reported occasional sightings of balloons floating from China since last month, and a surge in recent days, according to the ministry’s daily tally of Chinese military activities near the island. Official Taiwanese accounts about balloons were previously very sporadic.The recent balloons have mostly stayed off Taiwan’s coast. On Monday, however, one flew across the island, according to the ministry’s descriptions of their paths. Of four spotted on Tuesday, three flew over Taiwan, and two passed through to the island’s east side, facing the Pacific Ocean. Another flew over the island on Wednesday.The Taiwanese reports also noted some of the balloons’ proximity to the island’s military bases. Of the four reported on Tuesday, three were first detected 120 to 184 miles from the Ching Chuan Kang Air Base in the city of Taichung. Taiwan’s defense ministry declined to specify how close to the base they may have flown.The balloons do not appear to pose an immediate military menace to Taiwan, a self-governed democracy of 23 million people that Beijing says is its territory. Taiwan’s defense ministry last month indicated that the balloons seemed to be for collecting data about the atmosphere, but it has declined to give details about the ones detected this week.“The Ministry of National Defense is closely monitoring and tracking them, responding appropriately, and is also assessing and analyzing their drift patterns,” Maj. Gen. Sun Li-fang, a spokesman for the ministry, said on Thursday in response to questions about the balloons.Taiwan has, so far at least, experienced none of the alarm that gripped many Americans last year when a hulking Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon floated across the United States. China denied that the balloon was for spying, but Washington did not buy that line, and the dispute soured relations for many months.A surveillance balloon was shot down off the coast of South Carolina in 2023. China denied that the balloon was for spying, but Washington did not buy that line.Randall Hill/ReutersTaiwanese people are used to Chinese military flights near the island, and news of the balloons has generally been met with calm, if not indifference.The balloon flights may, nonetheless, be part of the “gray zone” tactics that China uses to warn Taiwan of its military strength and options, without tipping into baldfaced confrontation. The timing of the balloon flights, close to Taiwan’s election, was telling, said Ko Yong-Sen, a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a think tank in Taipei funded by Taiwan’s defense ministry. Mr. Ko has analyzed the pattern of recent sightings.“It’s more an intimidating effect in what happens to be a quite sensitive time, with we in Taiwan holding our election on Jan. 13,” Mr. Ko said in an interview. China, he said, “may want to tone it down. People say that it has recklessly used major weapons like planes and ships for harassment, so it’s shifted to balloons that can be used for a certain kind of lower-intensity intimidation and harassment.”In the election, Taiwanese voters will choose a president and legislature, and Beijing has made no secret of wanting the governing Democratic Progressive Party to lose power. The party opposes Beijing’s claims to Taiwan, and has asserted Taiwan’s distinctive identity and claims to nationhood. Decades ago, the party endorsed independence for Taiwan but now says it accepts the more ambiguous status quo of democratic self-determination.Lai Ching-te, the Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential candidate, has been leading in most polls up to Wednesday. But Hou Yu-ih, the candidate for the Nationalist Party, which favors closer ties with China, has trailed Mr. Lai by only a few percentage points in some recent surveys, and the Nationalists may emerge as the biggest party in the legislature, ending the Democratic Progressive Party’s majority.When asked late last month about the initial reports of balloons near Taiwan, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Defense, Wu Qian, did not confirm or deny any flights, but suggested that, as Taiwan was a part of China, any dispute over balloons crossing the median line between the two sides was moot. He also accused the Democratic Progressive Party of whipping up the issue “to swindle votes.”In 1996, China’s attempt to use missile tests and menacing military drills to shape Taiwan’s presidential election failed, and this time, Beijing has not rolled out any major military exercises in the weeks before the vote. The balloons may augur a more fiery response from China’s leaders if they dislike the election result, said Ben Lewis, a military analyst based in Washington who maintains a daily data record of Chinese military activities around Taiwan.“I think the number of overflights, and, even more, their timing, is still an escalation in the P.R.C.’s activities,” Mr. Lewis said by email, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “If nothing else, I’m taking this as a warning that the P.R.C.’s response to the election will likely be impossible to predict.”The latest sightings were almost certainly not the first time that balloons from China floated over Taiwan, Mr. Lewis said. The Taiwanese defense ministry began regularly reporting Chinese military flights near the island in 2020, and their numbers have grown year by year and now include drones. After a Chinese weather balloon was found last year on a small island controlled by Taiwan, Taiwan’s defense ministry said that most of the balloons swept in around the Taiwan Strait from December to February when, it noted, the “prevailing wind direction” helped them along.Mr. Ko, the Taiwanese defense expert, said that he worried more about what the Chinese military could do with more concerted use of high-altitude balloons over the island, like the one spotted over the United States last year, which could augment data collection using satellites and radar.“The intelligence gathering from Taiwan would be even more serious,” he said. “This is something we’ve been concerned about, and it would be more troublesome.” More

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      How Russian and Chinese Interference Could Affect the 2024 Election

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      The stakes for Russia in the presidential vote are large. Other adversaries also might try to deepen divisions among American voters.The U.S. government is preparing for its adversaries to intensify efforts to influence American voters next year. Russia has huge stakes in the presidential election. China seems poised to back a more aggressive campaign. Other countries, like Iran, might again try to sow division in the United States.As Washington looks ahead to the 2024 vote, U.S. intelligence agencies last week released a report on the 2022 midterm elections — a document that gives us some hints about what might be to come.Spy agencies concluded Russia favored Trump in 2016. What about in 2024?Russia appears to be paying close attention to the election, as its war in Ukraine is soon to enter a third year.Former President Donald J. Trump, the leading Republican candidate, has expressed skepticism about Ukraine funding. President Biden has argued that assisting Ukraine is in America’s interest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Biden’s Rating Dips on Gaza, and Marvel Drops Actor

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about five minutes.President Biden during a broadcast from the Oval Office after visiting Israel in October, following the breakout of the war against Hamas.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesOn Today’s Episode:Poll Finds Wide Disapproval of Biden on Gaza, by Jonathan Weisman, Ruth Igielnik and Alyce McFaddenCompanies divert ships from Red Sea route, by Andrés R. MartínezAbbott Signs Law Allowing Texas to Arrest Migrants, Setting Up Federal Showdown, by J. David GoodmanMarvel Will Part Ways With Jonathan Majors After Guilty Verdict, by Jonah Bromwich, Erin Nolan and Nicole SperlingAfter Weeks of Warnings, Iceland Volcano Erupts in Plumes of Fire, by Egill Bjarnason and Claire MosesJessica Metzger and More

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      UK presses for consular access to Jimmy Lai as Hong Kong trial enters second day

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      For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emailsSign up to our free breaking news emailsThe British government has called on Hong Kong to provide consular access to jailed media mogul Jimmy Lai as his landmark national security trial entered its second day on Tuesday.The 76-year-old British citizen and founder of the now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily is facing charges of colluding with foreign forces to endanger national security and conspiring with others to release seditious publications.He was arrested in August 2020 during the Hong Kong administration’s crackdown on activists and China critics following the 2019 democracy movement.The trial of Lai – the most high profile of the nearly 300 arrested under the Beijing-imposed draconian national security law – has become a diplomatic focal point between China and the West, including the UK, over freedom of press and judicial independence.The UK and the US have called on China for the immediate release of Lai, saying that the trial is politically motivated. Lai was already serving five years and nine months for a fraud conviction over a lease dispute for his newspaper.”We’ll continue to press for consular access to Mr Lai,” Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the British minister of state for the Indo-Pacific, said in parliament on Monday.She added that the UK was unable to provide consular access “because we are not allowed to visit him in prison”.Conservative former minister Tim Loughton, speaking during an urgent question, told the Commons: “This pantomime trial of Jimmy Lai is just the tip of a huge iceberg of the CCP’s (Chinese Communist Party) industrial abuse of human rights and indifference to international rule of law.”Sir Julian Lewis, who chairs the Intelligence and Security Committee of parliament, said: “How many times must a totalitarian communist state behave like a totalitarian communist state before the government will recognise it as a totalitarian communist state?”Foreign secretray David Cameron previously said Lai was targeted “in a clear attempt to stop the peaceful exercise of his rights to freedom of expression and association”.The media tycoon on Tuesday walked into the West Kowloon Law Court smiling and waving to his supporters amid heavy police presence. He also blew a kiss to the public gallery as a supporter chanted: “Hang in there!”Diplomats from at least 10 consulates, including those from the UK, the US, EU, Canada, and Australia, were in attendance during the trial along with Lai’s wife, son, and daughter.The city-appointed judges – Esther Toh, Susana D’Almada Remedios and Alex Lee – heard Lai’s lawyers’ plea to dismiss the sedition charges due to the “time bar”.Robert Pang, the lead counsel for Lai, argued on Tuesday that the prosecutors had laid the charge too late for the alleged conspiracy that ran between April 2019 and June 2021.Mr Pang on Monday said Apple Daily published its final edition on 24 June 2021 and the charge would have expired on 24 December. But the defendant was brought before the court for the first time on 28 December, at least four days after the “time bar” had expired.But prosecutor Anthony Chau said the time limit should be set based on when the alleged conspiracy – involving at least 160 articles – actually ended.Mr Chau said it would be absurd if prosecutors were required to charge a suspect every time an alleged offence came to their knowledge, making the case “fragmented” and “impracticable”.The judges said they would make a decision on Friday. The trial is expected to last about 80 days without a jury.The US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller reiterated calls for Lai’s release. “We have deep concerns about the deterioration in protection for human rights and fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong and that includes the rule of law,” he said.Beijing has dismissed the criticism from Western governments, saying that Washington and London made irresponsible remarks and that go against international law and the basic norms of international relations. More

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      China Increased U.S. Election Influence in 2022, Intelligence Report Says

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      Chinese authorities tacitly approved operations in a handful of races, according to the report, which represents the intelligence agencies’ joint analytic assessment.The Chinese government stepped up its efforts to influence American politics in the 2022 election, a new report released on Monday said, and intelligence officials are trying to learn if Beijing is preparing to further intensify those activities in next year’s presidential election.American intelligence agencies did not observe a foreign leader directing an interference campaign against the United States in 2022 in the same way Russia did in 2016. But, the report said, the U.S. government found an array of countries engaged in some kind of influence operations.And Chinese authorities tacitly approved operations to influence a handful of political races in the United States in 2022, according to the report, which represents the intelligence agencies’ joint analytic assessment.The intelligence agencies have already begun gearing up for influence efforts in the 2024 presidential election, which officials predict will be far more intense than those in 2022, with both China and Russia potentially trying to carry out major operations.In an interview this month, Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the head of U.S. Cyber Command and the director of the National Security Agency, said 50 people at the two organizations he leads were “working together to generate insights” on the next election. One major question, he said, is whether China will intensify its work or change tactics.“What’s the role of China in 2024?” General Nakasone said. “How do they come in? Is it a Russia model? Is it a model that they executed in 2022? Is it something we haven’t seen before?”The report found that China mostly focused on a few races. While it included few details, U.S. officials have repeatedly highlighted how China worked against a candidate for Congress in New York because of his support for the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.The Chinese officials trying to influence the vote were operating under longstanding guidance from leaders to work against officials who were perceived to oppose the Chinese government. But the report also said leaders in China had ordered officials to focus their influence operations on Congress, convinced that it “is a locus of anti-China activity.”The Chinese campaigns were designed to portray the United States as chaotic, ineffective and unrepresentative, the report said. But Chinese leaders did not authorize a “comprehensive” effort, wary of the consequences if they were exposed.Nevertheless, the report said, Chinese interference in 2022 was more significant than during the presidential race two years earlier because “they did not expect the current administration to retaliate as severely as they feared in 2020.”The report’s explanation of that conclusion was not declassified and remains redacted in the version released to the public.Since the 2022 vote, China has been experimenting with artificial intelligence to spread disinformation, General Nakasone said.The report also found that Russia sought to denigrate Democrats during the 2022 elections largely because of their support for Ukraine, which Russian forces invaded in February of that year.“Moscow incorporated themes designed to weaken U.S. support for Ukraine into its propaganda,” the report said, “highlighting how election influence operations are a subset of broader influence activity.”Senior intelligence officials have said Russia was not as active in 2022 because senior officials there were distracted with the war in Ukraine. But many intelligence officials believe Russia will probably try to step up its operations in 2024, as aid for Ukraine has become a more divisive political issue.In addition, much of Russia’s ability to influence elections was orchestrated by companies controlled by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, including the Internet Research Agency. Mr. Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash in August after his failed rebellion and march on Moscow.U.S. officials said they were unsure about how easily Russian officials would be able to interfere in the election without Mr. Prigozhin and with the apparent demise of the Internet Research Agency.The intelligence agencies concluded that foreign governments have largely given up on trying to tamper directly with votes or hack into election infrastructure. Instead, they believe that influence campaigns are more effective. More

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      The Wild Card in Taiwan’s Election: Frustrated Young Voters

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      An important bloc for the governing party, the island’s youth are focusing on bread-and-butter issues and have helped propel the rise of an insurgent party.In the months leading up to a pivotal presidential election for Taiwan, candidates have focused on who can best handle the island democracy’s volatile relationship with China, with its worries about the risks of war. But at a recent forum in Taipei, younger voters instead peppered two of the candidates with questions about everyday issues like rent, telecom scams and the voting age.It was a telling distillation of the race, the outcome of which will have far-reaching implications for Taiwan. The island is a potential flashpoint between the United States and China, which claims Taiwan as its territory and has signaled that it could escalate military threats if the Democratic Progressive Party wins.But many Taiwanese voters, especially those in their 20s and 30s, say they are weary of geopolitics and yearn for a campaign more focused on their needs at home. In interviews, they spoke of rising housing costs, slow income growth and narrowing career prospects. A considerable number expressed disillusionment with Taiwan’s two dominant parties, the governing Democratic Progressive Party and the opposition Nationalist Party.That sentiment has helped propel the rise of a third: the Taiwan People’s Party, an upstart that has gained traction in the polls partly by tapping into frustration over bread-and-butter issues, especially among younger people. The two main parties have also issued policy packages promising to address these anxieties.In interviews, younger voters voiced concerns about rising housing costs, slow income growth and narrowing career prospects. An Rong Xu for The New York TimesWhom young people ultimately vote for — and how many vote at all — could be a crucial factor in deciding the presidential election on Jan. 13. About 70 percent of Taiwanese in their 20s and 30s voted in the 2020 presidential election, a lower share than among middle-aged and older voters, according to official data. People ages 20 to 34 count for a fifth of Taiwan’s population, government estimates show.“We’re tired of the divisions and wars of words between political parties,” said Shen Chih-hsiang, a biotechnology student from Kaohsiung, a city in the south that is traditionally a stronghold of the Democratic Progressive Party. He remained undecided on whom to support.“Instead of worrying about the politics of major powers that are hard to change,” said Mr. Shen, 25, “I am more concerned about whether I can get a job and afford a house after graduation.”The frustrations voiced by Taiwan’s voters have highlighted some of the issues that the next administration will be under pressure to address. Taiwan is renowned for its cutting-edge semiconductor industry. But many younger workers at smaller companies earn relatively low incomes, and inflation can eat into any small pay increases. Housing prices have risen in many cities.Vice President Lai Ching-te, the Democratic Progressive Party’s candidate, has led in the polls for months. But his lead has narrowed over Hou Yu-ih, the candidate for the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang. Ko Wen-je, the candidate for the Taiwan People’s Party, has slipped in recent polls but could still play a decisive role by drawing youth votes that might have once gone to Mr. Lai’s party.Ko Wen-je, the candidate for the Taiwan People’s Party, at a news conference in Taipei last month. He has slipped in recent polls but could still play a decisive role by drawing youth votes.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesTo increase the chances of an opposition victory, Mr. Hou and Mr. Ko had briefly discussed forming an alliance. But the talks fell apart in a spectacular fashion late last month.“So much of this youth support for Ko Wen-je is really driven not by actual admiration for the man and his policies, but by frustration,” said Lev Nachman, a political science professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei. He cited focus group discussions he had with Taiwanese students.“This idea that the D.P.P. and K.M.T. are both equally bad seems to have taken hold among a lot of younger voters,” Professor Nachman said, referring to the two main parties.In a recent poll by My Formosa, an online magazine, 29 percent of respondents ages 20 to 29 said they supported Mr. Ko and his running mate, a fall from the previous survey, while 36 percent backed Mr. Lai. Other polls suggested a similar pattern, thought experts stressed those results could change in the final weeks of the race.The rumble of discontent did not mean that Taiwanese were dismissive about the risks of conflict with China, said Chang Yu-meng, the president of the Taiwan Youth Association for Democracy. The group had organized the presidential forum last month, where Mr. Lai and Mr. Ko answered questions from young voters.“I think young people are still highly concerned about international topics,” Mr. Chang said in an interview after the forum, citing relations with China as an example. “But apart from that, they are really concerned about a diversity of issues.”Chang Yu-meng, the president of the Taiwan Youth Association for Democracy, said young voters were concerned about a broad range of issues in addition to relations with China.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesWinning the election would be a watershed for the Democratic Progressive Party. Once a scrappy outsider, it was founded in 1986 as a wave of mass protests and democratic activism pushed the Nationalist Party to abandon authoritarian rule. Since Taiwan began direct presidential elections in 1996, no party has won more than two successive terms.The Democratic Progressive Party has tended to win most of the youth vote, but after two terms in power under President Tsai Ing-wen, it is no longer a fresh face. And many younger Taiwanese tend to see the opposition Nationalists as a party too caught in the past and too attached to China.“To young people in Taiwan now, the D.P.P. is the establishment,” said Shelley Rigger, a professor at Davidson College in North Carolina, who has long studied Taiwanese politics and conducted interviews with younger voters. “Whatever the D.P.P. was going to do for young people, they should have done by now. There’s a lot of youth dissatisfaction with the economy.”Mr. Ko, a surgeon and a former mayor of Taipei, has leaped into the space created by this discontent. He supported the Democratic Progressive Party earlier in his political ascent but formed the Taiwan People’s Party in 2019 as an alternative to the establishment. At rallies across the island, he has promised to solve housing and economic problems with a no-nonsense approach that he says he honed in hospital emergency wards. Mr. Ko and his supporters argue that he can also thaw relations with China.Jennifer Yo-yi Lee is one of the legislative candidates for the Taiwan People’s Party who is hoping to tap into voter frustration. “Young people are tired of the vicious battle between parties,” Ms. Lee said.Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times“Taiwan has been stagnant for too long, and it needs some changes,” said Hsieh Yu-ching, 20, who recently attended a youth rally held by Mr. Ko.Mr. Lai recently announced a series of youth policies, promising to improve the job opportunities and mitigate high housing costs. He also announced as his running mate Bi-khim Hsiao, who has been Taiwan’s representative in Washington for more than three years. Ms. Hsiao could lift enthusiasm for the Democratic Progressives, several experts said.“I also want to acknowledge the many domestic and social challenges that our young people are facing,” Ms. Hsiao said at a news conference last month. She promised to do more to address anxiety over jobs, housing and the environment.Vice President Lai Ching-te, the Democratic Progressive Party’s candidate, center left, announced as his running mate Bi-khim Hsiao, who has been Taiwan’s representative in Washington.Carlos Garcia Rawlins/ReutersThe parties all face the hurdle of coaxing voters to turn up at the ballot box. Taiwan’s minimum voting age, 20, is higher than in many other democracies, and people must vote where they are officially registered as residents. For some voters, especially younger ones, that means a long trip back to their hometowns.Millie Lin, who works at a technology company in Taipei and hails from Tainan, at the other end of the island, said she had not decided whether to go home to vote on Jan. 13.“When I see the struggles between political parties,” she said, “I sometimes feel that my vote can’t change anything.” More

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      Can Taiwan Continue to Fight Off Chinese Disinformation?

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      Ahead of a presidential election in January, Taiwanese fact checkers and watchdogs say they are ready for Beijing. But they are still worried.Suspicious videos that began circulating in Taiwan this month seemed to show the country’s leader advertising cryptocurrency investments.President Tsai Ing-wen, who has repeatedly risked Beijing’s ire by asserting her island’s autonomy, appeared to claim in the clips that the government helped develop investment software for digital currencies, using a term that is common in China but rarely used in Taiwan. Her mouth appeared blurry and her voice unfamiliar, leading Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau to deem the video to be almost certainly a deepfake — an artificially generated spoof — and potentially one created by Chinese agents.For years, China has pummeled the Taiwanese information ecosystem with inaccurate narratives and conspiracy theories, seeking to undermine its democracy and divide its people in an effort to assert control over its neighbor. Now, as fears over Beijing’s growing aggression mount, a new wave of disinformation is heading across the strait separating Taiwan from the mainland before the pivotal election in January.Perhaps as much as any other place, however, the tiny island is ready for the disinformation onslaught.Taiwan has built a resilience to foreign meddling that could serve as a model to the dozens of other democracies holding votes in 2024. Its defenses include one of the world’s most mature communities of fact checkers, government investments, international media literacy partnerships and, after years of warnings about Chinese intrusion, a public sense of skepticism.The challenge now is sustaining the effort.“That is the main battlefield: The fear, uncertainty, doubt is designed to keep us up at night so we don’t respond to novel threats with novel defenses,” said Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s inaugural digital minister, who works on strengthening cybersecurity defenses against threats like disinformation. “The main idea here is just to stay agile.”Taiwan, a highly online society, has repeatedly been found to be the top target in the world for disinformation from foreign governments, according to the Digital Society Project, a research initiative exploring the internet and politics. China was accused of spreading rumors during the pandemic about the Taiwanese government’s handling of Covid-19, researchers said. Representative Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island as speaker of the House last year set off a series of high-profile cyberattacks, as well as a surge of debunked online messages and images that fact checkers linked to China.For all of Beijing’s efforts, however, it has struggled to sway public opinion.In recent years, Taiwan’s voters have chosen a president, Ms. Tsai, from the Democratic Progressive Party, which the Communist Party views as an obstacle to its goal of unification. Experts and local fact checkers said Chinese disinformation campaigns were a major concern in local elections in 2018; the efforts seemed less effective in 2020, when Ms. Tsai recaptured the presidency in a landslide. Her vice president, Lai Ching-te, has maintained a polling lead in the race to succeed her.China has denied interloping, instead saying it is the “top victim of disinformation.”News about the presidential race on a television in a Taipei noodle restaurant. Many Taiwanese have internal “warning bells” for disinformation, a founder of a group called Fake News Cleaner said.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesMs. Tsai has repeatedly addressed her government’s push to combat Beijing’s disinformation campaign, as well as criticism that her strategy aims to stifle speech from political opponents. At a defense conference this month, she said: “We let the public have knowledge and tools that refute and report false or misleading information, and maintain a cautious balance between maintaining information freely and refusing information manipulation.”Many Taiwanese have developed internal “warning bells” for suspicious narratives, said Melody Hsieh, who co-founded Fake News Cleaner, a group focused on information literacy education. Her group has 22 lecturers and 160 volunteers teaching anti-disinformation tactics at universities, temples, fishing villages and elsewhere in Taiwan, sometimes using gifts like handmade soap to motivate participants.The group is part of a robust collective of similar Taiwanese operations. There is Cofacts, whose fact-checking service is integrated into a popular social media app called Line. Doublethink Lab was directed until this month by Puma Shen, a professor who testified this year before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an independent agency of the U.S. government. MyGoPen is named after a homophone in the Taiwanese dialect for “don’t fool me again.”Taiwan’s anti-disinformation groups include Doublethink Lab, formerly led by Puma Shen.Chiangying-Ying/Associated PressMascots at the entrance of the Taiwan Fact Check Center in Taipei.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesCitizens have sought out fact-checking help, such as when a recent uproar over imported eggs raised questions about videos showing black and green yolks, Ms. Hsieh said. Such demand would have been unthinkable in 2018, when the heated emotions and damaging rumors around a contentious referendum inspired the founders of Fake News Cleaner.“Now, everyone will stop and think: ‘This seems odd. Can you help me check this? We suspect something,’” Ms. Hsieh said. “This, I think, is an improvement.”Still, fact-checking in Taiwan remains complicated. False claims swirled recently around Mr. Lai, an outspoken critic of Beijing, and his visit to Paraguay this summer. Fact checkers found that a memo at the center of one claim had been manipulated, with changed dates and dollar figures. Another claim originated on an English-language forum before a new X account quoted it in Mandarin in a post that was shared by a news website in Hong Kong and boosted on Facebook by a Taiwanese politician.China’s disinformation work has had “measurable effects,” including “worsening Taiwanese political and social polarization and widening perceived generational divides,” according to research from the RAND Corporation. Concerns about election-related fake news drove the Taiwanese government last month to set up a dedicated task force.A banner in Taipei depicts Sun Yat Sen, the first president of the Republic of China, and Taiwan’s flag.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesTaiwan “has historically been Beijing’s testing ground for information warfare,” with China using social media to interfere in Taiwanese politics since at least 2016, according to RAND. In August, Meta took down a Chinese influence campaign that it described as the largest such operation to date, with 7,704 Facebook accounts and hundreds of others across other social media platforms targeting Taiwan and other regions.Beijing’s disinformation strategy continues to shift. Fact checkers noted that Chinese agents were no longer distracted by pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, as they were during the last presidential election in Taiwan. Now, they have access to artificial intelligence that can generate images, audio and video — “potentially a dream come true for Chinese propagandists,” said Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, a RAND researcher.A few months ago, an audio file that seemed to feature a rival politician criticizing Mr. Lai circulated in Taiwan. The clip was almost certainly a deepfake, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice and the A.I.-detection company Reality Defender.Chinese disinformation posts appear increasingly subtle and organic, rather than flooding the zone with obvious pro-Beijing messages, researchers said. Some false narratives are created by Chinese-controlled content farms, then spread by agents, bots or unwitting social media users, researchers say. China has also tried to buy established Taiwanese social media accounts and may have paid Taiwanese influencers to promote pro-Beijing narratives, according to RAND.Disinformation that directly addressed relations between China and Taiwan grew rarer from 2020 to 2022, the Taiwan Fact Check Center said last month. Instead, Chinese agents seemed to focus more on stoking social division within Taiwan by spreading lies about local services and health issues. Sometimes, other experts said, questionable posts about medical remedies and celebrity gossip guided viewers to conspiracy theories about Taiwanese politics.The ever-present menace, which the Taiwanese government calls “cognitive warfare,” has led to several aggressive attempts at a crackdown. One unsuccessful proposal last year, modeled after regulations in Europe, would have imposed labeling and transparency requirements on social media platforms and forced them to comply with court-ordered content removal requests.Critics denounced the government’s anti-disinformation campaign as a political witch hunt, raising the specter of the island’s not-so-distant authoritarian past. Some have pointed out that Taiwan’s media ecosystem, with its diverse political leanings, often produces pro-Beijing content that can be misattributed to Chinese manipulation.At an event in June, President Tsai stressed that “well-funded, large-scale disinformation campaigns” were “one of the most difficult challenges,” pitting Taiwanese citizens against one another and corroding trust in democratic institutions. Disinformation defense, she said, must be “a whole-of-society effort.”Fact checkers and watchdog groups said public apathy was a concern — research suggests that Taiwanese people make limited use of fact-checking resources in past elections — as was the risk of being spread too thin.“There’s mountains of disinformation,” said Eve Chiu, the chief executive of the Taiwan FactCheck Center, which has around 10 fact checkers working each day. “We can’t do it all.”From left, Lu Hong-yu, Lee Tzu-ying and Cheng Hsu-yu placed third as a team in a Taiwan fact-checking competition.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesAttempts to increase interest in media literacy have included a nationwide campaign, “humor over rumor,” which leveraged jokey meme culture and a cute dog character to debunk false narratives. In September, the Taiwan FactCheck Center also held a national virtual competition for youths that drew students like Lee Tzu-ying, Cheng Hsu-yu and Lu Hong-yu.The three civics classmates, who finished in third place, acknowledged that Taiwan’s raucous politics allowed disinformation to breed confusion and chaos. Their Taiwanese peers, however, have learned caution.“If you see something new, but don’t know if it is true or false, you need to verify it,” Ms. Lee, 16, said. “I just want to know the truth — that’s very important to me.” More

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      To Beat Trump, Nikki Haley Is Trying to Speak to All Sides of a Fractured G.O.P.

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      Her campaign will test what political strategists and observers of her rise in politics have said is among her greatest political skills: an ability to massage her message to the moment.To beat former President Donald J. Trump in the coming months, Nikki Haley, his former ambassador to the United Nations, must stitch together a coalition of Republicans: Mr. Trump’s most faithful supporters, voters who like his policies but who have grown weary of him personally, and the smaller but still vocal contingent who abhor him entirely.It’s a challenge that will test what political strategists and those who have observed Ms. Haley’s ascent from her first underdog win in South Carolina have said is among her greatest skills as a candidate: an ability to calibrate her message to the moment.Since announcing her bid in February, she has campaigned much like an old guard Republican: hawkish on foreign policy, supportive of legal immigration reform and staunchly in favor of the international alliances that Mr. Trump questioned during his administration. She has also sounded a lot like the former president, whose “America First” rhetoric she echoed while serving as one of his diplomats, with aggressive calls to send the U.S. military into Mexico and remarks about the need to rid schools and the military of perceived left-wing influences on hot-button cultural issues like race and transgender rights.Other than how she has navigated Mr. Trump himself, perhaps no issue best exemplifies Ms. Haley’s approach than abortion. She backed harsh restrictions on the procedure as governor of South Carolina and has called herself “unapologetically pro-life” on the trail, but she has struck a flexible tone as her party has flailed in countering the electoral backlash the conservative majority on the Supreme Court triggered when it overturned Roe v. Wade. Her appeals for “consensus” have been among the most common reasons cited for her upward climb in the polls in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist and a former aide to Mitt Romney who has known Ms. Haley since she was a state lawmaker first running for governor, said she “has always been a pragmatic conservative.” “She is comfortable in her own skin, and she is going to win or lose based on her own values and beliefs,” he said. Still, the difficulty for her, as for all the candidates attempting to emerge as a Trump alternative, is that “what a conservative is has been redefined by Trump himself,” he said.Mr. Trump’s lead over the field is dominant nationally and in every early state polled, and it remains uncertain that Ms. Haley could peel away enough of his faithful, no matter her approach, to come out on top. And what has so far propelled her could also become a liability, should she alienate one or more faction. Her rivals, including Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, have sought to portray her as insufficiently conservative and as someone who panders to Democrats. Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, labeled her a “snake oil salesman” who “will say whatever she needs to say to get power.”Her campaign officials and surrogates argue her politics have stayed the same, with the country and the world changing around her. “Nikki has always been a tough, anti-establishment conservative,” said Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for Ms. Haley.Ms. Haley’s attempt to thread the needle on abortion is already being tested, as she has faced skepticism from Iowa’s evangelical community, a critical voting bloc. Addressing a conservative Christian audience in Iowa, Ms. Haley said she would have signed a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy as governor.Democrats seized on Ms. Haley’s remarks as proof that, despite her tone, she is no moderate on the issue. The influential evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, who previously indicated that clear-cut abortion opposition would be the driving factor for his support, went on to endorse Mr. DeSantis. But just days earlier, Ms. Haley had received a seemingly impromptu endorsement from Marlys Popma, the former head of the state Republican Party and one of Iowa’s most prominent anti-abortion activists — who indicated she was comfortable with Ms. Haley’s stance.Here are four other issues on which Ms. Haley has shifted, evolved or otherwise tempered her positions.Immigration and refugeesMs. Haley first rose in politics on the deep red wave of the Tea Party — and its anti-immigrant sentiment. As governor, she signed some of the harshest immigration laws in the country in 2011, requiring law enforcement officers to ask certain people’s immigration status and businesses to verify that their workers were in the country legally.But Ms. Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, largely refrained from using dehumanizing language against immigrants and stuck to the consistent message that immigration was critical to the nation, as long as it was done legally. Still, two pivotal events prompted her to take a sharp turn on the issue: the deadly terror attack in Paris in 2015, and the rise of Mr. Trump.After the attack, Ms. Haley, who was then governor, went from supporting the efforts of faith groups to resettle refugees in South Carolina to aggressively fighting the Obama administration on the admission of Syrians fleeing violence, citing concerns over the vetting process.Before Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, she called his proposal to bar Muslims from traveling to the United States “absolutely un-American.” As Mr. Trump’s U.N. ambassador, she defended his order to temporarily block all refugees and people from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the U. S., as well as his decision to cut American funding to Palestinian refugees.On the trail, she has expressed support for expediting legal immigration avenues, for aiding escape from persecution and for improving the ways people can migrate, calling for a system based on merit and business needs, rather than quotas. But with a higher and more consistent frequency, she echoes Mr. Trump. She has promised to build a wall, send immigrants back and reinstitute some of Mr. Trump’s harshest immigration and asylum policies.Tough talk on ChinaMs. Haley seizes every opportunity to flex her foreign policy credentials and has stood out among her rivals for her steadfast support of Israel and Ukraine.A trickier spot has been her hawkish stance on China. Ms. Haley’s stump speeches are laden with warnings that China is outpacing the United States in shipbuilding, hacking American infrastructure and developing “neuro-strike weapons,” which she says can be used to “disrupt brain activity” of military commanders and civilians.But as governor of South Carolina, she lauded and welcomed Chinese companies that wanted to contribute to the state’s economy, helping those entities expand or open new operations. Those moves have opened her to attacks from Mr. DeSantis and other opponents, and she and Mr. DeSantis have lobbed false or misleading claims involving China at each other in recent weeks as the race for second place has tightened.Explaining her position on the campaign trail, Ms. Haley has argued that her administration’s investments in Chinese companies accounted for a fraction of the jobs and projects spurred during her tenure, and that she had not been aware of the dangers China posed until she became U.N. ambassador. The threat of China has also evolved, she adds.“There is not another governor in this race that hasn’t worked to recruit Chinese companies,” she said last month at a chapel in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Every governor has done the same thing, just like every one of you has Chinese products in your home.”Identity politicsFew moments have defined Ms. Haley more in the public view than when she signed legislation to take down the Confederate battle flag at the South Carolina State House, after a white supremacist shot and killed nine Black parishioners in Charleston in 2015, including a state senator. On the trail, she powerfully recalls the experience, casting herself as a new generational leader capable of bridging divides.But the feat also captures her calibration: As she ran for election in 2010 and then re-election in 2014, she rejected talk of removing the flag, a thorny issue in a state where Confederate heritage groups were a major political force. After the 2015 attack rattled South Carolina, Ms. Haley seized on the newfound political will among state lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.Ms. Haley has also wielded her own identity to significant effect. Much as she invokes her high heels to point out that she is the only woman in the race, she has used her family background to call for staunch immigration measures and her election as the first woman of color to lead South Carolina to argue that America is neither “rotten” nor “racist.”Fighting the conservative cultural battles that have animated the G.O.P. base in recent years has not been central to her presidential campaign, but Ms. Haley has echoed Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump in some of her language criticizing gender and racial diversity initiatives in boardrooms and classrooms. Her stump speech incorporates nods to the growing wave of anti-trans legislation, and her call to end “gender pronoun classes in the military” remains one of her most reliable applause lines on the trail. At her education policy rollout in September, she joined a conservative political group known for promoting book bans, another cause adopted by many on the far right.But as new polling has shown that the battle against “wokeness” has lost some of its political potency, her more recent remarks about education have tended to focus on support for school choice programs, which allow public money to be directed to private and religious schools, and tackling children’s low test scores in core subjects like reading and math.Donald J. TrumpIn the 2024 race, perhaps Ms. Haley’s most careful approach has been toward Mr. Trump, whose support among Republicans remains significant.Not long after the assault on the U.S. Capitol, Ms. Haley said Mr. Trump had “lost any sort of political viability.” But she later went on to say that the party needed the former president and suggested that she would not jump into the 2024 presidential race if Mr. Trump decided to run. She then became the first to challenge him for the nomination — a move the Trump campaign highlighted in an email to supporters as one of her “flip flops” in the 2024 race.In a January interview with the Fox News host Bret Baier, Ms. Haley explained her change of heart, saying conditions at the border, inflation and crime, and the country’s approach to foreign policy had worsened since she initially indicated she would stay out of the running. “I think we need a young generation to come in to step up and really start fixing things,” she said.On the trail, she has alternated between criticism and praise of Mr. Trump. On the one hand, she has lauded him for his border policies. At the first presidential debates in August, she was among six candidates who raised their hands to indicate they would support the former president as their party’s nominee, even if he were convicted of a felony. But she also has called Mr. Trump “thin-skinned and easily distracted” — among her sharpest critiques — and more recently has been describing him as a force of “drama and chaos” that the country cannot afford. More