Authoritarian Influence Operations in East Asia: Chinese Foreign Interference Through Cyberwarfare, Influence Operations, and Coercion

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Authoritarian Influence Operations in East Asia: Chinese Foreign Interference through Cyberwarfare, Influence Operations, and Coercion

Adam Foster Recently, China has increased its foreign political interference operations and developed cyber-strategies to hedge against threats from both state and individual actors. Since 2016, IR scholars have recognized Russian attempts at foreign interference in advanced democracies and US allies. Investigation as to how the Chinese government has developed and deployed foreign interference tactics, however, have largely gone unnoticed. Through the examination of case-studies in Chinese cyberwarfare, influence operations in Australia, and economic and diplomatic coercion in Taiwan, this paper aims to determine how the CCP uses foreign interference tactics to address its regime security concerns. This paper will argue that, as a safeguard against threats to its regime security, China has increasingly deployed interference in domestic economies and politics as part of its statecraft. Cyberwarfare efforts to promote pro-PRC business leaders and elected officials in Australia and to influence Taiwan’s media have had some success in promoting pro- PRC views. However, overt electoral interference by the CCP almost inevitably leads to negative media coverage and backlash against the PRC.

Introduction As China asserts itself as a global superpower, the Chinese Communist Party endeav- ors to pursue legitimation of its rule via reinstating the historical norm of Chinese political, economic, and cultural dominance in East Asia. Whereas prior to the Xi Jinping era, the CCP was content to live within an international system centered around US hegemony, its surge in both economic and political capital has encouraged the CCP to increase foreign political interference operations and develop cyber-operations strategies to hedge against risk from both state and individual actors that the CCP perceives as a threat to regime security. These policies are designed with the intent to change behavior and subvert organized opposition to Chinese interests, re- gardless of the target’s diplomatic or economic relationship with the US. To that end, how exactly does the CCP use foreign interference tactics to address regime security concerns? While the list of entities that China considers to be a threat to its national interests continues to grow, there are only a select number of actors that methodically criticize Chinese behavior or pose a threat to ongoing core CCP policies or national security. These policies include the One China Two Systems policy, the One China Policy, and, under Xi Jinping, the One Belt One Road Initiative. The DPP in Taiwan,

Adam Foster is a rising senior at Tufts University pursuing a double major in International Relations and Chinese with a concentration in Security. He currently works as the Lobbying Coordinator for One Day Seyoum, and his publications have appeared in the Tufts Daily and the 2001 Magazine. Due to his past advocacy and research efforts, he was recently awarded the 2021 Anne E. Borghesani Memorial Prize. His other interests include a passion for reading, skiing, and ballroom dancing. He plans to study in Beijing for the fall of 2021. Authoritarian Influence Operations in East Asia and more recently both major political parties in Australia, pose an active threat to current or future CCP policy initiatives. Action taken by the CCP against these actors provide repeated, visible examples of Chinese foreign political interference. The tendency of CCP party officials to divide the world into friends and enemies is a reflec- tion of the harsh retaliation that awaits those who publicly question how it chooses to exercise power (Schrader 2020, 1). The efficacy of such political interference is mea- sured in two outcomes: whether or not the CCP has successfully removed threatening parties or actors from power. To safeguard against threats to its regime security, China has increasingly deployed interference in foreign domestic economies and politics as part of its statecraft. Cyber-warfare efforts to cultivate and promote pro-PRC business people and elected officials in Australia and influence Taiwan’s media, have had some success in promoting pro-PRC views. However, overt electoral interference (to change election outcomes or fund/support pro-PRC politicians) almost inevitably leads to negative media coverage and backlash against PRC.

Literature Review Investigation as to how the Chinese government has developed and deployed foreign interference tactics are hampered by lack of covert operations evidence, modest amounts of scholarship for China as opposed to the former Soviet bloc, as well as the uniqueness of Chinese operations. By late 2016, most of the Western world became aware of the devastation of foreign influence campaigns, effectively demonstrated by Russian attempts at tampering in the US presidential election. These cost-effective methods involved relatively few hackers, classified information leaks, and bot farms based on social media platforms (Mohan and Wall 2019, 110–119). These methods successfully eroded trust in the voting and justice systems of one of the world’s foremost democracies, demonstrating both the inherent advantage of authoritarian regimes in political interference and the weakness of advanced democracies (Lahmann 2020, 189–224). Though the US and other Western powers had been previously aware of the power of psychological operations as a military tool, this was the first instance that foreign interference operations had used the medium of technology and succeeded in influencing a large civilian population. As such, 2016 prompted the re-evaluation of cyberwarfare and influence operations as authoritarian tools for democratic political interference. For most scholars, this was limited to an in-depth study into how the Rus- sians interfered with the US elections (Mohan and Wall 2019, 110–119; Ambrosio 2007, 49–57; Bader 2012, 49–57), the validity of electoral interference in international law (Lahmann 2020, 189–224; United Nations 2015), the benefits of electoral interference (Borzyskowski 2019), or how the Soviet Union and WWII-Great Powers used electoral interference to their benefit (Levin 2019; Bubeck and Marinov 2019). An even smaller subset of these scholars actively investigated the history of political interference of other authoritarian regimes outside of Europe (Allison 2008, 185– Adam Foster 202), and an even smaller subset attempted to identify modern attempts at foreign interference in other authoritarian regimes such as China (Diamond and Schell 2018, 145–154). Scholars were initially deterred by the intrinsic difficulty of investigation of covert operations which were compounded by the plausible deniability, stealth, and anonymity inherent to the Internet. In addition, the absence of evidence that China in the mid-2010s had the capabilities or political will to achieve these political influence operations, limited the dataset of Chinese foreign interference to papers published later than 2018, when China was first discovered assisting the KMT in local elections in Taiwan (Templeman 2020, 85–99). The motivations for China to pursue such political interference are obvious in hindsight: in recent years China has expressed a strong interest in not only severing US ties to the East Asian region as well as undermining the legitimacy of national governments or anti-CCP parties (Schrader 2020, 1–6, 10– 14). Moreover, the CCP under Xi Jinping has shown a strong preference for low-in- tensity confrontation below the level of armed conflict. Plus, the unique inherent advantage of authoritarian regimes in having no legitimate elections, the weakness and susceptibility of democratic to foreign influence campaigns, and the innovations in technological influence successfully deployed against the US by other authoritarian regimes, indicates a strong Chinese incentive to establish their own foreign interference programs (Diamond and Schell 2018, 145–154). Since then, international relations experts and domestic governments alike have attempted to decipher the multi-faceted structure of the Chinese intelligence system to uncover Chinese political interference in their own countries (Faligot and Lehrer 2019). Some, like Australia and Taiwan, have emerged with concrete evidence of Chinese attempts at cyberwarfare, influence operations, and diplomatic and economic coercion efforts. These explosive developments were covered in depth by many contemporary news articles but have yet to be digested by the small field of East Asian International Relations Scholars. As such, while most experts studying China agree that the Xi Jinping’s CCP has increasingly come into conflict with Western-aligned countries in the late 2010s and early 2020s, they disagree as to the scope of political interference, the goals that China is pursuing via its political interference, and by extension how China will focus its efforts in conjunction with Western-aligned powers in the future. Based on analysis of Chinese strengths and weaknesses, experts attempt to determine how the CCP uses their perceived strengths to extrapolate how China will favor certain political interference methods. These arguments on the strengths and uniqueness of Chinese foreign interference are diverse and include topics on: cyberwarfare, influence operations, and economic and diplomatic coercion—including subsets of these topics such as the development of aggressive Chinese diplomatic posturing (Gill 2020), IP theft techniques (Hannas et al. 2013), technological infrastructure (Kania 2019), cyber-espionage, infiltration of foreign media outlets (Templeman 2019), political bribery and em- bezzlement (Reuters 2019), the use of Chinese communities abroad for intelligence purposes (Joske 2020), economic and financial foreign policy, deteriorating bilateral Authoritarian Influence Operations in East Asia relations in East Asia, Chinese domestic affairs, and analysis of traditional espionage tactics. Interestingly the efficacy of certain political interference strategies employed by China are never questioned, most experts recognize that no one case is similar and the fields are constantly changing as governments react and implement new legislation to prevent foreign influence tactics.

Cyberwarfare The rise in Chinese cyberwarfare has coincided with change in the East-West relationship, caused by massive trade wars, political instability, and uncertainty in an international relations system threatened by a global pandemic. Cyberwarfare and digital influence operations are drastically increasing in the modern age and also provide relevant examples of Chinese revisionist tendencies through their campaigns on states such as the US, Taiwan, and Australia, who are targeted with cyber-attacks in tandem with other foreign interference strategies. Effective analysis of cyberwarfare involves looking at both Chinese domestic regime-security threat perceptions and retaliations on foreign entities via cyber-theft, cyber-espionage, and electoral interference. The development of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy is an example of Chinese attempts at safe-guarding regime security through aggressive technological posturing on social media. This new posture is reflected perfectly through the following government tweet, “China is angry. If you make China the enemy, China will be the enemy,” this tweet came as a response to criticisms of trade policies and the deterioration of bilateral relations with its Asia-Pacific neighbor, Australia (Kearsley 2020). A rise in the confidence of Chinese authorities and the spread of uncensored social media platforms in the West have spawned a new form of reprisal to any and all criticisms of Chinese government policy (Mulvenon 2020). These reprisals have risen to hitherto unseen levels and have been coined Wolf Warrior Diplomacy by the Global Times, a Chinese Newspaper. Wolf Warrior Diplomacy gets its name from Chinese block- buster nationalist films of the same name in which special forces operate abroad, and reflects the jingoist nature of American films in the 1980s such as Rambo (Gill 2020). Ironically the platform of choice to make these aggressive reprisals is Twitter, a social media platform that is banned for the general population of China. Examples of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy include the Chinese response to actions taken by the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing pact made up of the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Britain. After the group criticized China’s recent targeting of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy lawmakers, a Chinese spokesperson warned that China might “gouge and blind” the Five Eyes nations in retaliation. In addition, as recently as last month, a mid-level Foreign Ministry official tweeted a doctored picture of an Australian soldier holding an Afghan child at knifepoint, as a response to the Australian government criticizing the policies of the government in Xinjiang and insinuating the culpability of the Chinese government in origins of the coronavirus (Gill 2020). Though Wolf Warrior Diplomacy is a relatively recent development, the CCP has adopted more revisionist tendencies, translating Chinese regime-security concerns into long-term Adam Foster policy and foreign interference initiatives. Examples of long-term regime security initiatives are cyber-theft and cyber-espionage, which primarily attack technologically advanced democracies, targeting key industries or valuable government infrastructure. This cyber-theft is most prominent- ly practiced in the US and Australia, and through IP theft and industrial espionage China has acquired a competitive edge in technological innovation and research. Cy- ber-theft and industrial espionage allow China to reduce the cost of basic research and shore up its power domestically and abroad—without running the risks borne by lib- eral societies as a basis for their creative developments (Puglisi, Mulvenon, and Han- nas, 2013). The initial push for the establishment of industrial espionage programs in developed countries was derived from CCP concern in the early 2000s that there were no multinational Chinese brands, resulting in the Chinese government putting together the Science and Technology Plan (S&T), with the goal of putting greater pressure on foreign multinational companies via illicit means (Mulvenon 2020). In recent years, Chinese information and IT infrastructure have been exported abroad via corporations like Huawei to distort international markets, encourage global path dependency on China, and facilitate both industrial and cyber-espionage (Hannas and Tatlow 2020). Cyber-espionage since 2016 has been the PRC’s preferred method of operation, allowing them to hit targets from a distance. The logistics of cyber espionage are much more manageable and create less vulnerability than in-person operations. Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, cyber espionage is more relevant than ever. The Chi- nese firm APT10 successfully targeted 45 US companies across all industries and US government agencies, stealing records from JPL, Navy, and NASA, with it eventually being attributed to a contractor in China acting at the behest of the PRC National Security (Hannas and Tatlow 2020). The sophistication of such attacks have only increased after Xi’s promise in the White House Rose Garden in 2015, which swore a sharp decline in Chinese cyber espionage. Instead we saw a dramatic increase in cyber sophistication to obfuscate the origin of Chinese cyber-attacks. Chinese cyber-attacks have evolved to target larger populations in addition to valuable government infrastructure and key industries. The FBI has recorded over 1000 ongoing investigations of cyber-theft or IP theft with a Chinese nexus in at least 60% of the trade theft cases on a host of different actors (Wray 2020). The US Department of Justice has devoted more resources to these cases over the past seven years after they peaked in 2013, and beneficiaries of these cyber-thefts and espionage include universities who coordinate information collection in return for CCP-government funding, Chinese State Owned enterprises and CCP government ministries (Mulvenon 2020). The US Justice De- partment is increasingly focused not on cyber-espionage as a criminal enterprise but on non-traditional technology collection and fraud: where people are being co-opted for technological and corporate transfer that are injurious to National Security, such as economic espionage and trade secret theft (Puglisi, Mulvenon, and Hannas, 2013). Over two dozen laws have been created in the US to prevent Chinese technological Authoritarian Influence Operations in East Asia transfer, and the National Health Institute and National Science Foundation are con- tinually cracking down on inappropriate behavior of scientists, charging them with fraud and lack of disclosure of conflicts of interest as in the case of Harvard Professor of Chemistry Charles Lieber (Department of Justice 2020). Ultimately, experts in the field of cyberwarfare believe China’s foreign technology acquisition and “hybrid” system of legal, illegal, and extralegal import of foreign technology has helped its rapid rise to superpower status. Finally, the CCP has increasingly adopted digital disinformation tactics to achieve electoral interference and regime change in enemy states. The most obvious example of this is in Taiwan, where the CCP used targeted attacks on both the media and the local social media platforms to interfere with the Taiwanese presidential election in early 2020 (Templeman 2020, 91–92). Whereas the Russians have a clear pattern of pitting right-wing parties against left-wing parties to delegitimize centrist political institutions within the country, Chinese attempts at electoral interference have fallen into two categories. One category plays into Wolf Warrior Diplomacy and loudly refutes criticism of China, e.g. Xinjiang, Hong Kong, with the goal of present- ing China in the best possible light. The other category demonstrates the increasingly subversive and obstructive elements of Chinese digital disinformation operations via social media platforms. For example, in the Taiwan presidential election, the Chinese Military’s 311 Base conducted operations on Facebook, disseminating pro Han Kuo- yu propaganda and seeking to reduce support for the DPP candidate, Tsai Ing-wen. The 311 Base even managed operations on Taiwan-specific, Telnet based PTT forums, particularly the #Hatepolitics forum, in order to push the pro Han message (Mul- venon 2020). Additionally, Reuters reported in August 2019 that the PRC had been secretly paying journalists and editors to place positive stories about the mainland in Taiwanese papers (Lee and Cheng 2019). Many misleading online stories and false social-media rumors in recent years have been traced to mainland sources (Lee and Cheng 2019). These claims verify the testimony of William Liqiang, a Chinese spy who defected to Australia. In his testimony to the ASIO he added another example of digital disinformation with the use of “cyber-armies” as a technological content farms for disinformation on the mainland to influence the Taiwanese election, with fake stories showing President Tsai and the DPP in a negative light airing on the internet and by pro-CCP media outlets only for them to be later debunked (Schmitt and Mazza 2019). The rise in Chinese cyberwarfare and digital disinformation operations provide examples of Chinese revisionist tendencies against states such as Taiwan and Aus- tralia. The CCP’s adoption of cyber-theft, cyber-espionage, and electoral interference operations as well as its signature methods of criticism and subversive digital disinformation show the CCP’s commitment to the removal of the parties that it dislikes from power. These tactics clearly demonstrate China’s constant use of cyberwarfare as a tool to protect itself from perceived threats. Adam Foster

Influence Operations: Australia Influence operations are the most common examples of Chinese political interference and are arguably the most effective at changing political behavior of enemy states. While traditionally categorized with traditional espionage and covert methods, influence operations are more cost-effective, easier to implement, and harder to detect. In tandem with a funding and technological advantage, they can target both individual actors and large populations by looking for social, political, or ethnic divisions. Actors working on behalf of the US Department of Defense, define influence operations as the collection of tactical information about an adversary in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent (Schneier 2019). Clearly, China has used influence operations to target potential adversaries in the US, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Australia. While recent elections in Taiwan and the Hong Kong protests have provided key in- flection points to understand the CCP’s evolving and complex approach to influence operations, China’s influence operations in Australia demonstrate the future of CCP involvement in westernized countries and illustrate Chinese tactics (Department of Defense 2020; Diamond and Schell 2018). The first step towards any successful influence operation involves the infiltration of covert agents. Australia’s recent political bribery scandals, statements regarding Chinese influence campaigns, and recent change in the country-wide Chinese threat assessment, provides the ideal case study for the outcomes of influence operations by the Chinese Communist Party. Furthermore, it sheds light on how the CCP is currently seeking to undermine parties in both Taiwan and the US. The first claims of foreign interference within mainland Australia came from China’s consulate-general in Sydney, Chen Yonglin, who defected in 2005 and admit- ted “[The CCP] has begun a structured effort to infiltrate Australia in a systematic way” (Hartcher 2019). This systematic and structured method of covert infiltration would only be revealed later through the defection of a Chinese spy in late 2019. Wang “William” Liqiang sought political asylum and offered up a trove of intelligence documents involving political interference in Australia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in return for asylum (Kelly 2019). His knowledge of senior Chinese intelligence officials, bank account transaction history of several significant political donors, and covert operations within Australia allowed the Australian Security and Intelligence Organ- isation to verify his testimony, grant him protection, and political asylum, despite Beijing’s vehement denials and dismissal of both Mr. Wang and his claims (South China Morning Post 2019). Of what has been made public, the influence operations within Australia involved Beijing-sponsored legally listed companies funding intelligence operations, surveillance of officials and profiling of dissidents, and the co-opting of media organizations (McKenzie, Sakkal, and Tobin 2019). This pattern established by Mr. Wang reinforces a distinctly Chinese approach of infiltration and surveillance of dissidents and funding “China-friendly” politicians as a method of influence operations. This method, in addition to Australia, is evident in Taiwan and the covert CCP sponsoring of future-presidential candidate of Taiwan’s KMT Han Kuo-yu in his Authoritarian Influence Operations in East Asia mayoral election, where he rose out of obscurity to become the KMT presidential candidate in less than 3 years. The Australian government reaction to both Chen Yonglin and William Liqiangs’ testimony would change the bilateral relations between Chi- na and Australia and prompt further investigation into possible influence operations within the state (Westcott 2020). Mr. Wang’s testimony prompted a statement from both the current and former directors of the ASIO, current ASIO director-general Mike Burgess said: “Hostile foreign intelligence activity continues to pose a real threat to our nation and its security” and claimed that the current threat of foreign interference is “unprecedented” followed up with an official statement from the ASIO that the number of foreign agents currently operating in Australia is higher than during the Cold War (Diamond and Schell 2018, 147–151). Former chief of the ASIO Duncan Lewis, who said the Chinese government is seeking to “take over” Australia’s political system through its “insidious” foreign interference operations (Hartcher 2019). While the recognition of Chinese influence operations from the highest levels of government is important, influence operatives can establish covert infrastructure to bribe public officials, lure talent to China, and establish an entire diaspora community that has strong ties with the home-government. Again, all of these indicators are evident within Australia, whose government in 2018 launched investigations of indi- viduals and communities with strong language, cultural, or political ties to the CCP, leading to the discovery of a CCP-sponsored bribery operation of Australian public officials, the CCP connection to the Chinese diaspora community, and CCP efforts to establish pro-China programs and lure talents from Australian universities. The first instance of bribery involved Huang Xiangmo, a Chinese billionaire, who served a dual role as a large political donor on behalf of the CCP but also as a liaison with Australian universities, with the intent to disseminate pro-China policies. In this latter role, he is the principal investor of the Australia China Relations Institute (ACRI), which worked in tandem with the University of Technology in Sydney to publish papers primarily involving the benefits of the Australian-China relationship (Sharma 2016). As for his role in the nation-wide bribery scandal, in February 2019, Huang Xiangmo found his Australian residency revoked based on ASIO and intelligence community recommendations, and in Australian court for tax fraud. Huang got caught as the central figure in the downfall of the Labor senator Sam Dastyari, who was forced to resign from parliament after revelations he had asked Huang for money to pay personal legal bills and warned the tycoon he was under surveillance (ABC News 2017; Reuters 2019). This, along with Huang’s tax fraud and his long-running involvement with the Australian Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reuni- fication of China, which has been accused of being a front for Chinese government efforts to expand its global influence, led to the cancellation of his residency and subsequent fleeing of the country. Sam Dastyari was not alone in accepting donations from Chinese sources, however. Chinese-Australian MP Gladys Liu, NSW-State MP Ernest Wong, and State MP Shaoquett Moselmane all have had allegations of bribery, corruption, and treason in relation to China-sourced political donations, with Austra- Adam Foster lian Authorities finally raiding the home and office of Shaoquett Moselmane in June 2020 (Cave 2020). Other indicators of the degree of Chinese foreign interference are intelligence activities present in the Chinese diaspora communities, which are used as a method of advancing Beijing’s interests. A unit in China’s Communist Party known as the United Front Work Department employs thousands of local organizations to col- lect intelligence, encourage technology transfer, counter dissident movements, and generate support for other Beijing objectives. The department focuses its influence operations overseas on universities, Chinese diaspora communities, and foreign elites (Joske 2020). Other programs that use the diaspora to influence local populations include the Chinese government Talent Programs otherwise known as the 1000 Talent Program within the US, which recruits foreign researchers to help indigenous growth to bring them to China and use their foreign education (Mulvenon 2020). The reaction to these diaspora programs by the Australian government have been swift and harsh, with legislation that would revoke the privileges of State governments making agreements with foreign powers if they are “against the interests of the state.” This has extended to agreements made by universities, the plethora of diaspora intelligence communities, and establishment of talent programs as recently as December 2020. Overall, influence operations are the most common type of Chinese foreign interference and arguably the most effective at changing political behavior in tandem with other methods. Through infiltration, bribery, and contact with universities and diaspora communities, China has effectively established a foothold within Australia with which it can influence economic and political policy or even implement electoral interference.

Economic and Diplomatic Coercion: Taiwan Economic and Diplomatic Coercion policies are typically large-scale government policies that are more easily traced to the Chinese government, but are designed to actively put pressure on the regime in power. Economic and Diplomatic Coercion tactics are normally short-term solutions to insubordinate parties or countries, and are saved for the countries that China perceives as great threats. This tactic is often combined with attempts at media manipulation to disguise interference attempts and avoid backlash (Cole 2019; Templeman 2019, 6–9; Lee and Cheng 2019). As such, the country experiencing the greatest incidence of Chinese economic and diplomatic coercion efforts is Taiwan. Taiwan, which in addition to its proximity to China, has been the focus of Chinese reunification designs, has persistently chal- lenged mainland rule. The continued defiance of Taiwan and attempts by the CCP to subjugate it are part of an ongoing struggle to definitively resolve the outcome of the Chinese civil war. During this time, the CCP not only developed most of their political interference tactics against Taiwan, but also have attempted to deny their existence to the majority of the international community under its One China Policy. Given Taiwan’s consistent resistance to reunification, it has proven to be an Authoritarian Influence Operations in East Asia ideal case study of more direct CCP coercive tactics of political interference, such as diplomatic isolation, economic leveraging, and major media manipulation. That being said, the quantity of such attacks does not imply their effectiveness, especial- ly on a well institutionalized hyper-polarized partisan system. Taiwanese democracy developed under the shadow of China, making it resistant to CCP tactics that have proven more effective in contexts such as Hong Kong, where China can operate with less awareness and scrutiny, or Australia, where China can operate with virtually no political pushback (Templeman 2020). The heavy-handed tactics used by the mainland, while effective in the short-term, combined with other factors such as Covid-19 and the Hong Kong Protests to hinder the CCP’s goal of removing Tsai Ing-wen from power. Indeed, they lifted Ing-Wen, a DPP incumbent and anti- Beijing candidate, from a projected loss to an 18-point win in the course of a single year. Whereas, other candidates who do not receive overt support from Beijing tend to do better; threats and overt endorsements have usually only strengthened CCP-skeptical voices (Tem- pleman 2019, 6–9). This realization has not stopped the CCP from attempting to undermine governments who oppose the One-China Policy via overt diplomatic coercion. During President Tsai Ing-wen’s inauguration on May 20th, 2016, Beijing attempted to use diplomatic isolation in a show of force to demoralize and lessen her political impact. These policies included the suspension of the cross-strait hotline and other high-level communication channels that had been set up under President Ma Ying-jeou, Tsai Ing-wen’s KMT predecessor. The CCP officially blocked Taiwan from its observer role in international bodies such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the In- ternational Civil Aviation Organization, and continued to block their access through- out the influx of Covid-19 (BBC News, 2020). It revitalized historic efforts to strip Taiwan of its remaining formal diplomatic relations with other major world governments, eventually succeeding in changing seven of the twenty-two states that had previously recognized Taiwan to non-recognition (Shattuck 2020). The PRC has reduced tourism visas to Taiwan, and later suspended the previous-regime’s traveler program under which mainlanders had been making cross-strait visits. Further encouraged by a provincial KMT resurgence in Taiwan, in January 2018, Beijing opportunistically began upping the ante in an attempt to coerce the Tsai administration on its reunification plans. The CCP unilaterally introduced a new civil-flight route over the Taiwan Strait and forced the East Asian Olympic Committee to rescind Taichung City’s right to host the 2019 East Asian Youth Games (Templeman 2020, 87). These diplomatic coercion tactics, encouraged by a rapidly expanding military strength, graduated to outright intimidation tactics as proponents in the CCP perceived Taiwan as weak and the United States as uninterested. More recent years have shown that the CCP has been willing to detain Taiwanese nationals on deliber- ately-vague national-security charges without notifying Taiwanese authorities, a policy predecessor of detainments as a means of retaliation to Western criticisms of the CCP (Hernández 2021). The CCP has also used fly-overs of the main island and invasions Adam Foster of Taiwan’s territorial waters and airspace to both intimidate and express their dissat- isfaction with DPP policies. On March 31st, 2019 there was an intrusion of Taiwan’s airspace, as two PLA fighter jets began to encroach across the central channel over the Taiwan Strait, the first such violation in over two decades (Templeman 2020, 87). These attempts at diplomatic isolation and intimidation were not isolated incidents, but rather worked in tandem with greater economic leverage and coercion, given Tai- wan’s decades-long shift towards economic dependence on the mainland. The last two decades of trade and China’s rapid economic rise contributed to Taiwan’s dependence on the mainland, with heavy investment in Chinese businesses and China becoming Taiwan’s biggest trading partner. At the individual level, China actively encouraged unification via their One China Policy by keeping open cross- strait trading pathways as a method of encouraging a brain drain, with generous pay and benefits for the island’s best and brightest on the mainland (Templeman 2019, 5–8). Legal codes and protections for Taiwanese living on the mainland were strengthened to provide a sense of security, and free permanent-residency visas were given in addition to free schooling and medical insurance to any Taiwanese with six months of residency on the mainland in an effort at reunification from a grass-roots level (South China Morning Post 2018). As for corporations, China loosened restrictions on Taiwanese investments on previously sensitive industries, including entertainment, energy, finance, and infrastructure. Cultural and civic exchanges with the DPP were frozen, but importantly, the CCP continued to allow other cross-strait economic groups and businesses to interact on the condition that they avoided saying anything favorable about independence. This concept of favorable treatment and economic benefits by omission, or selective engagement allows Beijing to refuse to do business with companies who will not disavow independence, but ultimately have failed to make Taiwanese public opinion or corporate opinion drastically more favorable to unification (Bush 2019, 3–4). Given the previous failures of diplomatic isolation and economic coercion as behavior or policy changing tactics for the Tsai-administration, the CCP began a campaign of media manipulation and outright electoral interference to criticize the DPP party, promote pro-Beijing narratives, and disrupt the electoral integrity of Taiwan in both 2018 and 2020. This media manipulation, alongside influence operations, is a mission critical to the Chinese method of political interference, and as such, is present in many Chinese interference operations. Such examples include the Australian Chinese Relations Institute (ACRI) paying for pro-Beijing pieces from top Australian journalists, and the take-over and abduction of pro-democracy newspaper staff in Hong Kong (Reuters 2019; Ramzy and Yu, 2020). The scale of media manipulation in each case is an effective indicator of Chinese threat perceptions, with heavier investments in bribing journalists, cyber-attacks, creating pro-Beijing think-tanks, and purchasing large news agencies, indicating the prioritization of the issue within the PRC’s regime security agenda. Taiwan’s status as a high-priority threat to the CCP national security agenda Authoritarian Influence Operations in East Asia and shared cultural knowledge of the “pressure points” of Taiwanese society, as well as its plethora of hyper-partisan media outlets, allow heavy CCP investment in Tai- wanese media manipulation as a form of political interference (Templeman 2020). Though Taiwan has had strong partisan media outlets since its democratic transition of the late 1980s, since 2009 after the purchase of The China Times Group, which includes two TV stations and Taiwan’s newspaper of record, there has been a shift in both tone and political-moderation tendencies. The China Times Group’s outlets dropped their traditional moderation and eventually pivoted toward the pro-Beijing extreme. Critical coverage of CCP politics drastically decreased as reporting took on a strong pro-CCP tone, and by 2016 the audience controlled by the China Time Group had become reliably pro-Beijing. Stories that showed the mainland in a negative light were ignored, while the DPP and the broader pro-independence agenda received hostile scrutiny. Actions such as the scrubbing of the online archive of the atrocities of Ti- ananmen Square, and largely no mention of the 2019 protests in Hong Kong revealed the extent of CCP influence over the paper. A Financial Times report in 2019 revealed that editors and staff at the China Times Group were in regular contact with CCP officials at Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office (Hille 2019). These Western media reports prompted general suspicion within the Taiwanese population as to the ambiguous and rapid political rise of KMT’s Han Kuo-yu and the subsequent flood of Taiwanese media coverage, the China Times Group devoted more than half of their 2018 election coverage to him, enabled the populist candidate to flip a historically DPP stronghold to gain the mayorship. Kuo-yu later would rise to become Tsai Ing-wen’s opponent in the 2020 presidential election (Shan 2019; Huang 2019). His populist movement in 2018 enabled over 15 of the 22 local seats up for election to go the way of the KMT party, and gave Beijing the impression that a resurgence of the KMT was not only possible, but within reach, and was assisted by the media manipulation onslaught before the election. Notably, the 2020 presidential elections within Taiwan did not follow the result in the same success for Beijing as in 2018, mostly due to macro-scale events largely out of control of the CCP government, the resiliency of the Taiwanese population and election institutions, and the DPP majority quickly recognizing the growing cross-strait power imbalance and moving to impose legislation to prevent political interference operations. Han Kuo-yu’s dramatic win plus China Times Support fueled rumors of Beijing covertly supporting his candidacy and directing monetary resources to his campaign, rumors that increased when he was received warmly by Beijing on a state visit in March of 2019 (Templeman 2020, 91–92). Han’s threat caused a re-unification of a previously divided DPP, and after a hard-fought primary, Tsai Ing- wen emerged victorious with multiple former-DPP candidate endorsements. Han’s primary run and tendency to promote exaggerated, sometimes politically incorrect, remarks alienated him from party veterans, weakening overall KMT support on top of the Beijing-support rumors (Templeman 2020, 91–92). This was about the time that William Liqiang defected to Australia, prompting an even further shift away from Bei- Adam Foster jing, with the DPP capitalizing on the security-centric narrative with a representative saying, “we solemnly appeal to the Taiwanese public to face up to the fact that whether it is the Chinese internet army or the Chinese government, it is using the democratic system of Taiwan to infringe upon our democracy” (Kelly 2019). Though Economic and Diplomatic Coercion tactics are typically saved for the countries that China perceives as the greatest threat to its regime-security, in the case of Taiwan the PRC has been unable to avoid a massive backlash that could revert all previous achievements in foreign interference. Taiwan’s recent presidential elections illustrate the commitment, if not the efficacy, of Chinese Economic and Diplomatic Coercion, intimidation tactics, and media manipulation, as well as what effective resiliency to these tactics looks like. Though Beijing will undoubtedly attempt to interfere again should the DPP continue to pose an active threat to its regime security, the sweeping reforms implemented in reaction to Chinese foreign interference will shield Taiwan better than before.

Conclusion: The Results of Foreign Interference in Australia and Tai- wan Rapid deterioration of bilateral relations is not uncommon in targets of political interference, and, once discovered, can even lead to entire social movements or political parties using domestic sovereignty as their rallying cry to gain supporters. In Taiwan, this has become a core of the DPP campaign platform. Whereas Australia had been buffered from the majority of CCP political interference campaigns up until recently—primarily due to its proximity to China, CCP focus on reunification of the Tai- wan Strait, and lack of direct threat to the CCP itself—recent developments show the reaction on both sides to an increased threat perception. The reaction of Australia to these influence operations has been swift and harsh, and led to the spiraling deterioration of the Sino-Australian relationship. The ban on agreements that are against the interests of state legislation is indicative of the Australian government holding its ground in criticizing China on a range of political issues, including Beijing’s meddling in Australia’s internal government affairs. The high-profile corruption scandals and warnings from the ASIO prompted severe counter-measures from the Turnbull administration (Turnbull 2017). These included tougher penalties for influence operations and traditional espionage activities—such as leaking classified information and interfering with public infrastructure—along with sweeping provisions aimed at combating foreign interference and a registration scheme for agents of foreign political actors. The effectiveness of said legislation -re mains to be seen, as the ASIO still warns of foreign influence on future elections and legislation (Diamond and Schell 2018, 148–149). What the legislation has ac- complished is the freezing of bilateral relations between China and Australia, with journalists being arrested and evacuated, tariffs imposed, and even the boycotting of the China-hosted Olympics being considered (Griffiths and Hollingsworth, 2020). In response, in October of 2020 the Chinese government publicly leaked a 14-point Authoritarian Influence Operations in East Asia list that outlines its grievances with the Australian government. It included gripes as varied as Australia’s decision to ban Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from its 5G network, “spreading disinformation imported from the US around China’s efforts of containing COVID-19,” as well as general “antagonistic” reporting on China by the Australian press (Kearsley 2020). Beijing also cited Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s call earlier this year for a global investigation into China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and it hit back with a series of tariffs on Australian goods like wine, beef, barley, and coal that threaten about $20 billion worth of Australian exports (Debinski and Santamaria 2020). China in November of 2020 has declared Australia must take the blame for “a sharp downturn” in relations between the two countries, with a Foreign Ministry spokesman saying all responsibility is on “some people in Australia (who) tend to regard China’s development as a threat,” citing the Australian crackdown on alleged foreign interference in its domestic politics as one of the main reasons (Westcott 2020). The Australian crackdown, while worsening, has been tame compared to Taiwanese responses. Following claims of electoral interference, media manipulation, and economic and political coercion, the domestic political response was instantaneous from both the population and the Tsai administration. The DPP used its majority to pass amendments to the Political Parties Act, which required all registered parties to issue annual financial statements. The new Foundations Act created a regulatory framework to oversee private foundations who took public money. Most controversial of all the changes, less than two weeks before the 2020 elections, the ruling party passed an Anti-Infiltration Act barring Taiwanese citizens from accepting money or taking instructions from foreign “hostile forces” to lobby for political causes, make political do-nations, or disrupt political processes, enabling local prosecutors to charge for voter fraud, and investigate allegations of vote-buying and CCP spying (Associated Press 2019). There was a blanket ban on government acquisition of Chinese commu- nications technology from companies like Alibaba, Lenovo, and Huawei, audits on media outlets, and fines on companies for evasion of the review process for economic investment from the mainland (Yang 2019). Importantly, it preserved the freedom of speech precedent for media outlets, and monitored, but did not close, any media outlets for slanted reporting and failing to fact-check news reports that proved false. Further political mistakes by Han and the geopolitical situation in Hong Kong shifted the discussion to sovereignty and favored the Tsai-administration, after which no amount of media manipulation would secure the election for the KMT. Overall, the 2020 foreign interference campaign followed a pattern: Beijing’s hard line and diplomatic isolation tactics proved detrimental to the future of cross-strait relations and anti-CCP protests in Hong Kong overwhelmed whatever soft-power economic attraction or intimidation weapons Beijing tried to wield. Beijing’s foreign interference operations via cyberwarfare, influence operations, and economic and diplomatic coercion have indicated its willingness to inter- vene in foreign countries as a safeguard against perceived threats to its regime security. Adam Foster In the coming years China will continue to pursue foreign interference strategies in the US, Australia, and Taiwan, and should these governments fail to implement new policies designed to counter Chinese interference, the CCP may succeed in both their short term goal of removing direct political threats and their long term goal of changing widespread population behavior. Authoritarian Influence Operations in East Asia

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