Taiwan: China Flooded Twitter with Fake ‘Taiwanese’ Apologies to WHO Chief

Twitter eye
CHRISTOPHE SIMON/Getty
Frances Martel

The government of Taiwan accused communist China on Friday of setting up fake Twitter accounts to apologize to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), on Taiwan’s behalf after the former Ethiopian politician claimed Taiwan was instigating racist attacks on him.

The Chinese Communist Party has launched a full propaganda assault on Twitter, enabling its government spokespeople to promote misinformation on the platform despite it being illegal for Chinese citizens to use it. Twitter has refused to censor them, even when sharing dangerously false information about the Chinese coronavirus, such as a conspiracy theory that it was developed by the U.S. Army.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau presented evidence on Friday that, almost immediately after Tedros accused Taiwan of enabling racist slurs against him, bizarre Twitter accounts posting in Chinese writing began apologizing to the WHO chief. Taipei traced the accounts to China, concluding that they were falsely identifying as Taiwanese people allegedly embarrassed by their government’s unproven racism.

“There is a concern it is a deliberate operation by overseas forces,” the bureau warned. “Falsely claiming to be Taiwanese and openly admitting to racist attacks on WHO Director General Tedros and begging forgiveness seriously damages our country’s international reputation.”

According to Focus Taiwan, the messages all appeared to be written in the same format and copying off each other, making them look like inorganic responses to Tedros’ comments. The originator account of the apologies, according to Taipei, was named “Radio Free Xuzhou,” a play on the American-funded human rights publications and broadcasters with similar names. Radio Free Asia, the affiliate that covers China, has regularly broken news stories on human rights atrocities committed by the Communist Party against Tibetans, Uyghurs, Christians, Buddhists, Falun Gong practitioners, and others the Party considers enemies of the state.

The @RFXZ China account, which uses a similar green color to Radio Free Asia, claims to be “the largest news media outlet in Xuzhou city,” eastern China. It was created in March 2020. It also features a frog emoji in its Twitter biography, which anti-communist protesters in Hong Kong sometimes use as a variation on the Western media icon “Pepe.” It also lists its official website as “Pornhub.com.”

On Thursday, the account posted, “I am Taiwanese, and I feel extremely ashamed that the Taiwanese attacked Tedros in such a vicious way. On behalf of the Taiwanese, I apologize to Tedros and beg him for forgiveness. ”

The account later revealed itself, in English, as being run by a Chinese individual.

The Taipei Times, citing the Bureau’s press conference, also identified an account calling itself TMG News as a culprit, which clearly identifies itself as communist Chinese. The profile currently has a pinned tweet featured that uses the hashtag “#saysrytoTedros” that reads, “I am Taiwanese, and I am extremely ashamed that the Taiwanese have attacked Tedros so maliciously. On behalf of the Taiwanese, I apologize to Tedros and beg for his forgiveness.”

Taiwanese officials claimed the accounts encouraged Chinese citizens to share the same apologetic statement and even falsify Taiwanese identification cards to pretend to be Taiwanese citizens.

The Taiwanese government expressed outrage and confusion on Wednesday after Tedros accused it of a racist abuse campaign against him.

“I can tell you personal attacks that have been going on for more than two, three months. Abuses, or racist comments, giving me names, black or Negro. I’m proud of being black, proud of being Negro,” Tedros said at a WHO press conference. “I don’t care, to be honest … even death threats. I don’t give a damn.”

“Three months ago, this attack came from Taiwan. We need to be honest. I will be straight today. From Taiwan. And Taiwan, the Foreign Ministry also, they know the campaign. They didn’t disassociate themselves,” Tedros continued. “They even started criticizing me in the middle of all that insult and slur, but I didn’t care.”

Tedros, who is not a medical doctor and allowed the WHO to claim the Wuhan virus was not contagious among humans, did not offer any examples of this abuse or evidence tying it, if it exists, to Taiwan in any way.

In response, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen invited Tedros to visit Taiwan and see for himself that it is not a bigoted country.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office responded to Tsai’s measured statement by accusing Taipei yet again of helping “wantonly spread racist comments.”

“All they have done for cross-Straits relations is making vicious remarks and provocations,” Chinese communist spokesperson Zhu Fenglian said.

Zhao Lijian, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman responsible for the theory that the coronavirus is an American invention, told reporters on Friday that the WHO had not excluded Taiwan – even though it refuses to allow Taiwan to be a member of the organization and ignored Taipei’s warnings of a contagious disease in December – and that “no one cares more about their health and well-being than the Chinese central government.”

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.