Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Last spring, pupils at National Chia-Yi Girls\u2019 Senior High School in southern Taiwan were set an unusual topic for their annual essay exam: \u201cHow to negotiate with a dictator\u201d. The students had to choose the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbour \u2014 prevent war at all costs, or deter through strength? The exam paper mentioned Russia\u2019s assault on Ukraine, but the unspoken parallels with China\u2019s threat to their own country were obvious.Teachers say they were stunned when they got the scripts back: nearly all the teenagers argued that Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it. \u201cAlmost without exception, they wrote that, being small and weak, Taiwan must avoid appearing as a threat to China,\u201d says Chu Yi-chun, who teaches Mandarin. \u201cNo matter how they harass us, we must tolerate it.\u201dSuch submissive sentiments are in sharp contrast to those held in Taiwan\u2019s society at large \u2014\u00a0and young people have traditionally been among the most passionately patriotic and pro-independence citizens in the country. According to data published by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation polling organisation last year, people between 20 and 24 are no longer the age group who feel their Taiwanese identity the strongest, bucking a long-established pattern.\u00a0And there are indications that, among young people, Taiwan\u2019s decades-old trend towards ever stronger support for independence might also be going into reverse. There are many potential reasons for these changes. But for a number of Taiwanese social scientists and ruling party politicians, one of the main causes is TikTok, the controversial Chinese social media app that has amassed more than 1bn monthly active users worldwide.\u00a0The app \u201ccannot necessarily make Taiwanese youth identify with the Chinese nation or agree to unification with China\u201d, says Eric Hsu, a researcher at the Taiwanese think-tank Doublethink Lab who is working on the first systematic survey of TikTok\u2019s impact on Taiwanese society. \u201cBut it can probably lower their apprehension towards China and their will to resist.\u201dIn the US, TikTok is fighting for its survival after a law was passed last year requiring its parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, either to sell its stake in the app or face a ban. The deadline is this coming Sunday. Officials in Washington have said the platform poses a national security risk because China might coerce TikTok to manipulate information published every day to millions of people in the US through control of the platform\u2019s algorithm. They have also argued that the app allows Beijing to \u201cweaponise America\u2019s data against us\u201d \u2014 allegations that ByteDance has insistently and repeatedly denied.Officials and researchers in other countries, especially western ones, have raised many concerns about the app, ranging from its addictive effects on children to the ways in which it could be used to sow disinformation.But nowhere is the question of whether TikTok is a tool of Chinese political influence as vital as in Taiwan. Beijing claims the island, home to some 23mn people and the world\u2019s largest producer of advanced semiconductors, as part of its territory and misses no opportunity to reiterate its determination to bring it under control \u2014 a scenario that the vast majority of Taiwanese people vigorously reject. Ever since the country democratised in the 1990s, its identity separate from China and the determination to preserve its independence has grown more deep-rooted.Taiwanese educators and researchers fear that the ever greater numbers of children using the app risk being exposed to content that seems innocent, but causes them to look more favourably upon the People\u2019s Republic and feel more negative towards their own nation \u2014 something they suspect is a deliberate strategy by Beijing. \u201cTikTok remains committed to complying with local laws and regulations,\u201d a company spokesperson says in a statement. The country\u2019s high school and university students, the first generation of TikTok users, are less politically engaged than earlier generations, says Lin Thung-hong, a research fellow at the institute of sociology at Taiwan\u2019s top research institution Academia Sinica. \u201cOver the past few years, young adults are much less willing to vote,\u201d he says. \u201cWe worry that they might turn cold on politics and retreat, and that would have an immense impact on Taiwan\u2019s political future.\u201d\u201cThey are not prepared to fight against China,\u201d says Chu, the teacher. \u201cThey don\u2019t feel that we must protect this land.\u201dAt first glance, TikTok seems an unlikely threat. According to the 2024 Taiwan Internet Report, an annual independent survey, just under 22 per cent of the population use the app, either in its international form, branded as TikTok, or the original version available in China, called Douyin.That is the second-lowest proportion in Asia after Japan and little more than a quarter of the percentage in Malaysia, where TikTok has a dominant position. It is also markedly lower than in western countries like the US, Spain, France or the UK.But, among young people, the picture changes radically. According to the government-backed Taiwan Communication Survey, 44 per cent of primary school pupils in Taiwan use TikTok, and among junior high school students (typically aged 13-15) usage is close to 60 per cent. The figure levels off only slightly among senior high school students.\u00a0While a majority of Taiwanese TikTok users are male, among schoolchildren girls are massively heavier users. For many of them, dance is the way in. Yi-an, a 14-year-old from Shih-ting near Taipei, started watching self-recorded dance videos on the platform about two years ago.\u00a0\u201cMy friends and I all really like these, and at some point I started making my own,\u201d she says. Yi-an now posts short dance routines every few days and is building a following of her own.\u201cIt becomes a key avenue through which they can express themselves and also\u00a0the main channel through which they build their social lives,\u201d says Chu.Both TikTok and Douyin offer content in Mandarin, the national language of both Taiwan and the People\u2019s Republic of China. TV dramas, songs, dance styles and celebrities from China, whose population dwarfs that of Taiwan, have a heavy presence.\u00a0\u201cEven if they consume American, Japanese, Korean or whatever else on TikTok, they absorb Chinese content most easily,\u201d says Chu. \u201cThey include Chinese cultural references and lingo from that content in their speech and writing.\u201dInitial work done by the Doublethink study suggests this seemingly innocuous content can act as a gateway to less anodyne material. Researchers who set up TikTok accounts imitating Taiwanese schoolgirls discovered that, after a few days of them being served dance video clips, the app\u2019s algorithm started to suggest soft political content. Some were street interviews conducted in Taipei\u2019s trendy Ximending district in which Taiwanese teenagers were prompted to compare Chinese \u201cdemocracy\u201d with the weaknesses of their own political system.\u00a0A study conducted by Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman in Malaysia spotted a similar pattern on RedNote, also known as Xiaohongshu, another rapidly spreading Chinese social media app, on which users test and recommend make-up, restaurants and travel destinations or teach cooking and other skills.\u00a0Xiaohongshu did not respond to a request for comment.The findings also echo international research on TikTok. A series of studies conducted last year and led by Lee Jussim, a social psychologist at Rutgers University in the US, found that, when compared to other platforms such as Instagram or YouTube, TikTok offered a \u201cdisproportionately high ratio\u201d of content favourable to China\u2019s Communist party. Their results indicated that people who used TikTok heavily viewed China\u2019s human rights record in a significantly better light and felt more positive about visiting China.As in many countries, observers worry that, because of the way the algorithm works, TikTok users increasingly inhabit echo chambers \u2014 but in Taiwan this has an added political charge. \u201cAmong our students, TikTok has the effect that everyone retreats into their bubble and is increasingly unable and unwilling to hear what others think,\u201d says Chu.\u00a0It may influence teenage behaviour in other ways. Smaller-scale studies have found that many Chinese slang words have entered Taiwan\u2019s youth lexicon in the past three years. The northern Chinese term \u201cniu\u201d (meaning \u201cawesome\u201d) was unheard of in Taiwan until recently, but now appears commonly on teenagers\u2019 social media feeds and in real life. Other Chinese-influenced memes and games have become commonplace, teachers say.Cashbox, one of Taiwan\u2019s largest chains of Karaoke lounges, now offers a large and growing \u201cTikTok songs\u201d category. Kemusan, a twist-like dance set to an electronic version of a traditional Chinese tune that went viral on TikTok last year, triggered a huge craze in Taiwan.All this seems a long way from politics, but seemingly harmless content can have political undertones, say researchers. \u201cThere are a lot of people selling agricultural products on Douyin who display their lifestyle of honest, hard work,\u201d says Hsu, adding that young Taiwanese people \u201cthink when they see this that, while the Chinese government may not be good, the Chinese people are simple and kind, so I don\u2019t need to feel animosity [towards Beijing].\u201dTeenagers the FT spoke to acknowledge that the app has an effect on them, but dismiss any suggestion that they are being influenced politically. Several admit that, after using TikTok, they had trouble concentrating and finishing longer assignments. \u201cI know I spend too much time on there, it kind of sucks you in,\u201d says Yi-an with a laugh. But she and several friends said it was \u201cnonsense\u201d that they might become more China-friendly.For Taiwan, building a sense of national pride took years after the end of one-party rule by the Kuomintang (KMT) in 1991, which had suppressed Taiwanese culture and study of the island\u2019s distinct history. But that identification eventually became strong, especially among young Taiwanese. According to the Taiwan Social Change Survey, a multiyear research project run by Academia Sinica, the youngest age cohort consistently had the highest percentage of people identifying as \u201cTaiwanese only\u201d, as opposed to Chinese or both Taiwanese and Chinese: over 80 per cent.Until a few years ago, Taiwanese youth frequently described themselves as \u201cnaturally pro-independence\u201d. In 2014, during the so-called Sunflower Movement, tens of thousands of students occupied parliament to protest against what they saw as the then-government\u2019s cosy relationship with China. The pro-independence Democratic Progressive party came to power two years later.But Taiwan\u2019s political make-up has become more complex recently. Although last year\u2019s elections kept the DPP in power, the opposition took control of parliament, creating political deadlock. Some worry that this makes Taiwan especially susceptible to political polarisation.\u00a0A 2022 survey conducted by Austin Wang at the University of Nevada suggested that TikTok had no marked influence on supporters of the DPP or the KMT opposition, which supports closer ties with China. But among people who supported the smaller Taiwan People\u2019s party, which benefited from younger swing voters\u2019 distaste for traditional partisan politics, \u201cwhether or not they use Douyin has a significant impact on political attitudes\u201d, Wang wrote.\u00a0The research suggested that opposition to Taiwanese independence was sharply higher among TikTok-using TPP supporters and neutral voters compared with non-TikTok users of the same group.\u00a0Signs of growing Chinese influence are all the more noteworthy given that Taiwan\u2019s real-world exchanges with China are shrinking as relations between the two countries have become increasingly hostile. In contrast to the 1990s and 2000s, when Taiwanese companies set up tens of thousands of factories in China, investment has been falling for over a decade. Meanwhile, tourism and student exchanges have slowed to a trickle, and the number of Taiwanese people living and working in China has fallen from a peak of over 400,000 a decade ago to half that.\u00a0Lin of Academia Sinica believes that TikTok and other platforms have filled the information vacuum. \u201cAs so many ties are cut, China tries to reach our young people through social media. That leads our youngsters who have never been in China and know nothing about it [to] develop illusions about it, and then they project the dissatisfactions they have with Taiwan on to that illusionary China.\u201dThe generational divide has been emphasised because many younger Taiwanese people feel at an economic and social disadvantage. During the 2010s, entry-level salaries were stagnant, while house prices have soared, partly as a result of Taiwan\u2019s extended technology export boom. Meanwhile, the country has one of the world\u2019s most rapidly ageing populations, threatening public healthcare and pensions. Younger people are also frustrated with what they see as unsustainable environmental and energy policies.\u00a0These misgivings have already led to disaffection with the two main parties, which they feel have failed to address their concerns, say pollsters.Government officials and experts fret that TikTok is exploiting these cleavages. \u201cWe still know very little,\u201d says Lin, \u201cbut what we can say for sure is that among Taiwanese users, TikTok heightens feelings of economic dissatisfaction, intensifies tendencies towards depression and undermines people\u2019s confidence that they can participate and make a difference politically.\u201dEnoch Wu, an activist affiliated with the DPP, suggests a simple solution, popular in party circles, echoing the approach taken in the US: the Taiwanese government should ban the app as a national security threat.\u00a0Educators and parents interviewed for this story who are critical of the ruling party supported that view, but opposition politicians have argued that the government must not interfere with free speech.In theory, Taiwan has a case. TikTok has not set up a subsidiary in the country but operates only through external marketing companies, an arrangement DPP officials say violates laws requiring media organisations to create a legal entity in Taiwan if they operate there. According to lawyers, Taipei could demand internet service providers and other business counterparts stop working with it. \u201cBut it is just impossible politically,\u201d says Puma Shen, a DPP lawmaker and expert in disinformation. \u201cThe very moment a DPP government [moved] on this, we\u2019d have the opposition at our throat accusing us of restricting free speech.\u201d\u00a0This debate matters, of course, far beyond Taiwan\u2019s borders. Officials in Taipei question how Washington will actually enforce a ban on TikTok: even if it is blocked or taken off app stores, determined users could easily get access via a VPN. They point to India, where TikTok user numbers have actually increased after the government banned it in June 2020.\u00a0One of the few levers for governments could be barring server companies from working with TikTok, thus denying it the bandwidth needed for smooth livestreaming and video loading, says Shen. How Taiwan tackles these dilemmas will be a valuable case study for many other countries. Above and beyond a single app, there are existential questions at stake, insists Hsu. \u201cWe need to find an effective way of communicating with our young people,\u201d he says, arguing that banning TikTok would \u201conly shatter their trust in our democracy.\u201d\u201cOnce our society is divided and our democratic system no longer trusted, Taiwan will lose its ability to resist China.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Last spring, pupils at National Chia-Yi Girls\u2019 Senior High School in southern Taiwan were set an unusual topic for their annual essay exam: \u201cHow to negotiate with a dictator\u201d. The students had to choose the best survival strategy for a small country facing a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-169263","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169263\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}