This op-ed was published in commemoration of International Fact-Checking Day, held April 2 each year to recognize the work of fact-checkers worldwide.
The Russo-Ukrainian War that erupted in February 2022 prompted global fact-checkers to work together to combat false information. The European conflict also influenced the situation in Asia, particularly Taiwan, which had long been threatened by China. But we also learned an important lesson from the war.
As a fact-checking organization in the Chinese-speaking world, Taiwan FactCheck Center has collaborated with the global community to resist Russia’s disinformation and propaganda operation during its aggression in Ukraine.
We have also observed how international news outlets, fact-checking organizations, and open-source intelligence communities worked together to combat disinformation and uphold the truth in times of conflict, doing their best to convey the truth to the global public.
Authoritarians manipulate public opinion by controlling news, rewriting the past, and providing alternative facts. That’s why Ukrainian fact-checkers and the global community have fought under the hashtag #UkraineFacts — to minimize the impact of war-related disinformation and propaganda. We hope that global citizens can make informed judgments about the historical events happening in the world today based on facts and truth.
Turning to Asia, in recent years, China has increasingly tightened restrictions for international media to report from China on the ground. As the result, the Chinese state-run media has become the single source of news for global media and audiences, spreading propaganda and positive stories about China.
One example is Xinjiang. To unveil the situation of Uyghur Muslims in China, an ethnic minority group that the Chinese government has heavily oppressed, international investigative journalists use satellite imagery and interview victims who have escaped from education camps to piece together facts. However, Chinese state-owned media and manipulative social media posts have countered by overwhelmingly promoting “happy life” stories, whose authenticity is difficult to verify.
Hong Kong provides another case. Since the anti-extradition bill protests in 2019, Hong Kong authorities have used judicial power to suppress media independence, leading to self-censorship, silence on social media platforms and a mass exodus of excellent media workers.
Furthermore, China has governed Hong Kong with patriotic education, full media monitoring and a rewrite of history. Journalists at the forefront have lost their foothold. The situation for fact-checkers is no less perilous.
Taiwan, which has long been threatened by China, has faced a challenge of false information coming directly from China.
Last August, when former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, China launched military exercises to intimidate Taiwan’s society and spurred a wave of mis/disinformation concerning the exercises.
Among the dozens of fact checks Taiwan FactCheck Center published at the time, one altered photo is perhaps the most conspicuous. It showed a member of the People’s Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party, looking through binoculars while the Taiwanese frigate Lan Yang and Hualien’s Heping Power Plant are shown at the rear, creating the vibe of Taiwan being closely threatened and under siege.
The forged photo was originally released by the Chinese state-run Xinhua News Agency but gained global publicity as it was also supplied to The Associated Press platform, a common source of images for newsrooms across the globe. Many internationally renowned media outlets unknowingly used the photo for their reports, with some wrongly citing the AP as the source.
This altered photo illustrates how China systematically spreads false information and shows that the world is relatively unsuspecting of Chinese propaganda and disinformation campaigns when compared to its wariness of Russia. Even global media outlets that have the expertise and capacity to verify or investigate might become a propagator of falsehood and propaganda.
In Asia and the Chinese-speaking online world, China’s disinformation campaign is not only about distributing false information but also controlling information in the news, online and on social media. In this challenging situation, how journalists and fact-checkers uncover and preserve the truth and help global citizens and audiences think critically about contemporary history has become a complex issue that requires our collective attention.
On International Fact-Checking Day, let us recommit ourselves to reporting the truth and combating mis/disinformation. Truth is the greatest fear of those who spread falsehoods. By working together to uncover the truth and check facts, and by empowering our audiences with critical thinking, all truth-telling texts and images will generate tremendous power.
Truth and facts can help us move forward and avoid the tragedies of history.
