A hybrid war is a complex form of war that uses political, economic, diplomatic and military means and includes both state and non-state actors. The scope of this research is limited to information war, which is one of various war types composing hybr...
A hybrid war is a complex form of war that uses political, economic, diplomatic and military means and includes both state and non-state actors. The scope of this research is limited to information war, which is one of various war types composing hybrid wars, especially by focusing on the ‘psychological and cognitive attack’ of information war in detail.
Before the 2018 local election in Taiwan, ‘China’s Information War against Taiwan,’ which showed the characteristics of a planned information war with a certain scale, emerged as a major political agenda during the election campaign. However, there have been no active researches on ‘China’s Information War against Taiwan’ due to the difficulty in securing evidence for the dissemination of false information.
Based on the examples of Russia and China which use hybrid wars, this study analyzed the patterns of information war that China has been carrying out against Taiwan and examine show Taiwan can effectively defend itself against the hybrid wars. By doing so, this study aims to propose a strategy to respond to modern wars that are newly emerging and changing.
The study findings on China’s hybrid war against Taiwan showed that the Chinese government has been controlling the Internet public opinion and ideas through fake news, media contents, and social media. To improve the efficiency of such control, China has also been maintaining and expanding its ‘influence’ by projecting its‘values’ and ‘interest’ to the Taiwanese society as a strategic narrative. In addition, China has been minimizing its negative image among Taiwanese citizens through fake news and politically recruiting Taiwan’s major figures in universities, businesses, and religious sectors. Such implementation and control system of China's hybrid war is very complex and has thus limitations to clarify it, but it is presumed to be based on the Party-Leading Political system in which the Communist Party leads the government.
The study identified that China has been conducting a hybrid war against Taiwan to realize ‘One China,’ and that Taiwan is also preparing various countermeasures at the government or at the private-sector level. Since it is difficult to determine the development and the extent of the impact of hybrid war due to its nature, this study examined Taiwan’s various countermeasures to minimize damage from the hybrid war. Overall, Taiwan’s countermeasures will remind of the concept of a new hybrid war that non-regular wars, terrorism, or crime, which have not been recognized as key threats in a war, can play very decisive roles in determining victory in a war. Thus, Taiwan’s responses against China’s information war will provide huge implications to South Korea.