Taiwan opposition says ban of China's Rednote app is censorship

TAIPEI: Taiwan’s opposition leader decried as censorship on Friday a government plan to suspend access for a year to the Chinese social media platform Rednote, while the island’s presidential office backed the plan.

Taiwan’s interior ministry cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Xiaohongshu in Chinese, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since 2024, when it unveiled the plan the previous day.

The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment.

“Many people online are already asking ‘how to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,'” Cheng Li-wun, chairwoman of Taiwan’s largest opposition party, the Kuomintang, wrote on her Facebook page.

Employing an expression from China about use of virtual private networks (VPNs) to skirt the country’s pervasive online censorship, Cheng, whose party favours close ties with Beijing, said banning the app was a major restriction of internet freedom.

This “only makes us lament that Taiwan’s long-prized internet freedom and freedom of speech have already been restricted and strangled by the Democratic Progressive Party in the name of national security,” Cheng added, referring to Taiwan’s ruling party.

Rednote saw a surge of U.S. users in January as expectations grew that the similarly Chinese-owned TikTok could be banned, a risk averted by a subsequent divestiture plan.

TAIWAN HAS WARNED AGAINST CHINESE APPS

While China bans popular Western social media platforms like Facebook, X, YouTube and Google, democratically-governed Taiwan typically has no such curbs and prides itself on its openness.

The island, which China claims as its territory, has repeatedly warned people of the dangers of using Chinese apps, mostly due to the risk of disinformation coming from Beijing.

The interior ministry said it did not get a response from Rednote when the government contacted it asking for concrete measures to ensure data safety.

Karen Kuo, spokesperson for Taiwan’s presidential office, said the island’s interior ministry had offered a prompt explanation about the fraud and security risks.

“We respect the ministry’s decision and express our support,” she told reporters.

Taiwan has also complained that China has targeted Taiwanese to spread disinformation and undermine public trust by using Western social media it has banned domestically.

In October, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office launched a Facebook page using traditional Chinese characters used in Taiwan but not in China.

It was quickly spammed by the island’s internet users who posted Taiwan flags and poked fun at China’s official censorship.

Taiwan’s government rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying that only the island’s people can decide their future.

Neither government officially recognises the other.