I'm John

I'm John National with Gordon Chang at Gordon G Chang, my colleague and co-host,

Gordon, there's a Taiwan election coming up.

Right now it appears the DPP is leading.

Is that accurate?

Good evening, John.

Yes, the January 13th elections in Taiwan

are not just for the president,

but for the legislature as well.

And William Lye, the vice president of the Democratic Progressive Party, holds a lead in virtually

every poll, but we just don't know how big that lead is because there's a lot of disagreement as to how far he's ahead.

This is a Democratic election and to remind everyone the Russian joke is the problem with democracy is you can't be sure what's going to happen.

So we welcome Steve Yates, chair of the America First Policy Institute's China Policy Initiative.

It appears that Beijing is following the proverb of its superior dictatorship, that would be Moscow.

You can't be sure what's going to happen. So therefore, Steve, the

reporting says that Beijing is using Tik-Chok and YouTube. That seems trendy of them. Is that all the tools they have? Good evening to you Steve.

Good evening, John. For certain, the tools that Beijing is using for influence operations in Taiwan are not limited to these online platforms.

Without doubt, the younger generation of Taiwanese are heavy users of things like Tik-Toc, but they use other apps and other means as well.

And Beijing is using all of the tricks that it has had, ranging from trying to

publicize compromise of Taiwan's national security apparatus to whining and dining of local officials to give them posh trips to the mainland in the hopes of compromising them or influencing how they would vote.

So it's basically all cards are on the table and face up for the most part in terms of Beijing trying to influence these outcomes.

They don't have a great track record of doing so,

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