The report by Taiwanese fact checkers is directly relevant to the election campaign, the voting and counting process, the candidates, their family members, the political parties of the candidates, or policies promoted by the candidates.
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The report examines 40 Chinese false information narratives propagated on social media or websites during the election campaign. We observed that:
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False information narratives focused the most on attacks on candidates, followed by misrepresenting policies, spreading suspicions about the election's integrity, and instilling fear about the outcome of the election if a specific candidate was elected.
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The most common tactic utilized in disinformation claims was to distort the original information.
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Pictures were the most popular format. In addition, we identified several cases in which information manipulators promoted AI-generated videos or photos.
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Most of [the disinformation] targeting Harris and her vice presidential candidate Walz, appeared to be popular among Chinese supporters of Trump, influencers who frequently ridiculed US politics and society, and those who enjoyed the drama of American election campaigns. The comments accompanying the false claims questioned Harris and Walz's beliefs and ethics, as well as the Democrats' immigration policies that made the US more unsafe and US foreign policies that often meddle with international events. They warned of the ramifications if Harris was elected as the US president, including a loss of freedom, of course, and presented false evidence that the Democrats may have committed voting fraud.
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There was also a false claim about China's meddling. For example, one false piece claimed that Anthony Blinken, US Secretary of State, stated that China supplied fraudulent IDs to the US for those who were ineligible to vote in the presidential election. The truth was that Blinken never made the statement.
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The majority of the false information pieces can be traced back to English social media posts. Some of them were even translated or adapted from X posts by Trump's allies, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (who claimed that Harris wanted to shut X down) and Elon Musk (who promoted a video mocking Harris' campaign video).
One of the few exceptions was a piece suggesting Harris confirmed the US was involved in the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. This false claim was made by an official account linked to the Chinese government, which referenced the Russian state outlet Sputnik as its news source. However, Harris has never made such a statement.
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