ET
Taiwan’s four referendum results were released on Dec. 18. The majority voted no to all four issues including the ban of the imports of additive-fed pork from the United States, which was considered to possibly affect Taiwan–U.S. relations.
Taiwanese organizations and experts called out the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for trying to manipulate public opinion in Taiwan by spreading disinformation about the U.S. pork import issue prior to the referendums.
The IORG (Information Operations Research Group), a Taiwanese non-governmental organization that studies the Chinese communist regime’s information manipulation and penetration in Taiwan, pointed out that the regime’s official media has been disseminating disinformation such as “the United States has continuously gained benefits from Taiwan by selling contaminated pork and weapons” since April 10.
Since May, Taiwan has experienced a local COVID-19 epidemic. The IORG said that the CCP’s disinformation campaign used the lack of vaccines in Taiwan at that time to claim “even if Taiwan bought pork and weapons from the U.S., they could still not get COVID-19 vaccines from the U.S.”
