Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Taiwan Statebuilding Party/Facebook
THE TAIWAN STATEBUILDING PARTY (TSP) held a press conference late last week about an incident involving an Eslite customer receiving phone calls from two Chinese individuals pretending to be customer service after purchasing a copy of If China Attacks.
The customer in question, Cynthia Yang, is the deputy secretary-general of the Here I Stand Project, an NGO devoted to promoting Taiwan’s participation in international organizations from which it is currently excluded. Yang was initially called by the telephone number that claimed to be customer service for a post-purchase survey about the book. On the other hand, the TSP is a pan-Green third party that grew in prominence after the 2014 Sunflower Movement.
If China Attacks (阿共打來怎麼辦？), co-written by disinformation researcher Puma Shen and military expert Wang Li, details scenarios of a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The book was a hit upon its release in December 2021 and is one of the major books that has influenced discourse in Taiwan on military readiness in past years, along with Lee Hsi-ming’s 2022 The Overall Defense Concept: An Asymmetric Approach to Taiwan’s Defense. The book was written as a primer to common, imagined scenarios of an invasion, outlining which scenarios are more realistic and which are not, as well as with the aim of popularizing knowledge about the military.
The first part of the first phone call with the male caller, which is only recorded in audio
Yang asked to call back, then began recording audio of the call. The call, which is with an older male caller, cuts partway through, but Yang begins video recording after getting back on the line with the man. Later on, Yang received a phone call from an older female caller, and also recorded this on video. Yang subsequently posted all three calls on YouTube.
Both callers have visible accents, despite the man trying to fake an accent imitating a Taiwanese person, both callers referring to “us Taiwanese,’ and attempting to claim that they are in Taiwan. The man notably demonstrates a lack of knowledge about Taiwan during the call, such as not seeming to understand the waishengren/benshengren distinction in Taiwan, or the political positions of the KMT. Yang quizzes him in Taiwanese during the call and he responds in Fujianese, suggesting that he may have a Fujianese background. The woman demonstrates a lack of knowledge about basic geography in Taiwan, such as about districts in Taipei despite claiming to be in Nangang, Taipei, or about other Taiwanese cities such as Taichung, and verbally stumbles for a long period before claiming to be in Nangang.
During the call, the Chinese man becomes argumentative when Yang answers his questions about what she had read, asserting that Taiwan’s military was weak and would quickly fold in cowardice in the face of an attack. The man also suggested that Taiwanese should vote for the KMT, and that the US would not intervene in the event of a Taiwan contingency. The man tries to assert the superiority of China over Taiwan, stating that China has a higher living standard than Taiwan, but seems to be confused when Yang states that she had lived in Shanghai for two years, and that each place has advantages and disadvantages.
The man is at a loss to answer when Yang refers to Taiwan’s democracy or states that there is less economic disparity in society between Taiwan and China. Likewise, the man does not seem to actually know the contents of If China Attacks, claiming that most of the other people he called as part of the survey about the book were pro-unification, and is unable to answer when Yang comments that most of the purchasers of the book would buy it because they are concerned about the possibility of a Chinese invasion and so would slant more pan-Green. The man also claims that most Taiwanese young people are pro-unification, to laughter from Yang.
The second part of the first phone call, which has video
The conversation with this man goes on for around 20 minutes. The call ends when Yang begins to openly accuse him of not being Taiwanese and probes him about why he has her customer purchase information from Eslite, though the man claims this is “public information”. Yang maintains a calm tone during the call, while the man becomes increasingly agitated and flustered, particularly because he is unable to answer factual questions about Taiwan.
Though most news coverage has honed in on the first phone call that Yang received, from this man, it is the second call that Yang receives that proves truly bizarre. The second caller, an elderly woman, also has an audible accent and is unable to answer basic questions about Taiwan. But she quickly gets off track and instead starts to ask questions about Yang’s love life, offering to set her up with a male Eslite customer she previously called. The conversation also goes on for fifteen minutes, while Yang tries to probe for what information about her purchase history that the woman on the phone can access.
Since the press conference held by the TSP, the Ministry of Digital Affairs has stated that it will investigate the matter. Namely, it is not implausible that the customer service information of Eslite may have leaked. Eslite has been criticized in past years for poor data security, resulting in customer information being leaked to scammers. According to DPP legislator Liu Shyh-fang in 2022, there were over 900 fraud reports about Eslite that year, and Eslite was the most commonly reported platform to the 165 anti-fraud hotline.
Consequently, it is highly possible that Eslite’s customer purchase data was leaked to the Chinese government or to Chinese scammers. Taiwan generally has poor digital security, as observed in leaks of Taiwan’s entire household registration database, or health insurance information.
The second phone call with the elderly woman
It is the second call that suggests that it is the Chinese government that has this data–rather than, say, nationalistic but highly ineffective Chinese scammers acting as “volunteer” United Front. Certainly, given the pattern of widespread leaks in Taiwan, China has sought to intimidate Taiwan in the past by suggesting that it has penetrated Taiwanese society and is monitoring the public for their political views. China has suggested, for example, that it has compiled a list of Taiwanese independence advocates to kill in the event of an invasion.
What proves puzzling, however, is the unconvincing nature of the calls, particularly the second caller. Indeed, while much media reporting frames the incident as intimidating, the overall effect proves comical–Yang herself is visibly trying to prevent from laughing during the calls. It is also the bizarre and humorous nature of the calls that suggests the authenticity of the incident, rather than that the incident was concocted by pro-independence groups for political purposes.
Yet it is far from unheard of for the Chinese government’s disinformation or United Front efforts to be carried out in a surprisingly ineffective manner, often through tenders to third-party firms to carry out the work on the cheap. Indeed, one notes that Chinese provinces and local governments have United Front departments, which may have to meet quotas for superiors, and it is not impossible that some such department outsourced this work to a group of confused elderly.
It is to be seen what the Ministry of Digital Affairs unearths about the incident. Since then, however, author Puma Shen joked on Facebook that perhaps his next book should be called “If China Calls.”