The government of Taiwan faced one of its greatest challenges on the heels of its most effective government administration. The cause wasn’t external, but internal, and was sparked by a global pandemic.
Ming-Cheng Lo, a professor of sociology at UC Davis, was living in Taiwan during the COVID-19 pandemic while conducting research on the nation’s democracy. This global crisis was an opportunity to see how popular ideas about democracy and civil society played out in real time.
“Taiwan is this dynamic combination of being both a really robust democratic institution but also under not just geopolitical threats but increasingly cyberattacks, misinformation and the erosion of democratic norms,” Lo said.
The government’s response to the pandemic followed three key patterns that Lo calls the nation’s “cultural grammar of democracy.” These patterns work like moral codes that define right and wrong across government policy: liberty, caring and efficient bureaucracy.
What ultimately happened in Taiwan showed these three patterns in sharp relief as deep fissures spread through internal pressures during a global crisis.
Taiwan’s path from dictatorship to democracy
In 2021, The Economist described Taiwan as the most dangerous place on Earth for the risk China poses to its security. Taiwan is an independent, island nation about 100 miles from mainland China, which has long been vocal about its goal of reunification. Taiwan’s current independence began in 1949 after the Chinese Communist Revolution drove China’s former leader off the mainland to establish a parallel, independent state.
While Taiwan’s current history began as a dictatorship, it has grown into one of the world’s most democratic societies. In 2024, the Global State of Democracy Initiative ranked Taiwan at 17th in the world for representation, tied with Chile, and 24th for rights. Taiwan ranks higher than the United States in three out of the rankings’ four measures.
Lo traveled to Taiwan to write a series of papers that examine the ways people in Taiwan thought about their democracy and civil society. The values she identified — liberty, caring and efficient bureaucracy — mirror some U.S. democratic values, but also include values grounded in Taiwan’s history.
For example, compassion is an idea grounded in Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist traditions. The value of efficient bureaucracy can also make a policy’s end-result more important than the process of achieving it — sometimes, the ends justify the means.
In the best case, Lo argues, all three of these values can be combined in ways that support Taiwan’s democracy. However, they can also be combined in ways that contradict each other and create a challenge to democracy, which is what happened during the pandemic.
When Taiwan’s democratic values fell out of balance during the pandemic
Taiwan reported its first case of COVID-19 in January of 2020. Early on during the pandemic, Taiwan was a leader in responding to reduce infection rates before any vaccines or treatments were available. Their measures for social distancing, mask wearing and contact tracing were all successful.
Taiwan also experienced the same mask shortage that affected every country. It implemented a quota system for distributing masks. It also launched the campaign, “I'm OK, You Go Ahead,” that asked people to buy fewer masks than their quota so frontline health workers and people who were more vulnerable could be sure to get masks.
In this response, Lo said, all three values — liberty, caring and efficient bureaucracy — came together for effective democratic governance.
“The state administered efficient bureaucracy, but instead of saying, ‘Let's forget about people's liberty,’ it asked people to voluntarily follow state guidelines,” Lo said. “The caring came in when people said, ‘This is how we take care of each other.’”
However, the process wasn’t a perfect one, added Lo. The three values underpinning the government’s success could easily fall out of balance.
For example, a government that mandates mask wearing can become draconian, like the zero-COVID policy in China. However, people who overemphasized their personal freedom and chose not to wear masks might have put their vulnerable neighbors and loved ones at risk of infection and harm.
Lo went through a strict quarantine when she arrived in Taiwan during the pandemic. Police did contact tracing through people’s phones, and if it appeared you were outside of your quarantine there were legal consequences. For two weeks she couldn’t even go out to buy food. She either ordered through Uber Eats or her parents left food at her door.
In media reports Lo included in her research, people said that all of this was inconvenient but worth it, especially to protect their older loved ones. Lo also heard personal stories of neighbors who asked neighbors under quarantine to leave the neighborhood entirely rather than put them at risk.
“I have a friend who told me she could quarantine at home but she didn't want her parents to feel the pressure from the neighbors, so she spent money for a small room at a quarantine hotel,” Lo said. “That kind of communal pressure can be excessive as well.”
Why misinformation and disinformation are a global threat to democratic systems
Misinformation and disinformation were widespread, global problems especially during the pandemic. Misinformation is false or inaccurate information, while disinformation is false information used to intentionally mislead.
In spite of the government’s early success, Taiwan’s opposition political party saw an opportunity. When similar quotas began for the new vaccines slowly trickling out from the U.S., the opposition argued that rather than efficient bureaucracy, it was an intentional delay to favor the domestic vaccine to the benefit of the Prime Minister who had supposedly bought stock in the company that produced it.
This argument was debunked as false, but some people believed it and began to panic.
“There was a false narrative that the government was violating the principle of efficient bureaucracy and not taking care of the people,” Lo said. “The two moral codes were combined to organize this disinformation.”
Misinformation and disinformation are not unique to Taiwan. Neither is polarization. They are global phenomena, and Lo said that they may be a fundamental problem with democracy.
“It becomes a danger for democracy when politicians and capitalists fabricate lies that key to your echo chamber,” Lo said. “These are not just stories with a particular bent that resonate with your lived experience. They’re actually fabricated misinformation, and people continue to consume them. You see this in both Taiwan and in the U.S.”
The social climate in Taiwan during the pandemic made misinformation like the false rumor about vaccine quotas so potent.
“It was general fear and anxiety,” Lo said. “I could just feel this this fear, and then you had social unrest.”
When the government imposed quotas on vaccines, stories emerged of people using their personal connections and money to jump ahead. Those stories promoted the sense of a breakdown in social order at a time when everyone was already anxious and afraid. The climate began to shift from a sense of caring to everyone for themselves.
Can personal connection help counter disinformation?
This shift showed how fragile democracy can be, Lo said, especially in the middle of a global crisis and especially with the pressures of political polarization driven by tactics like misinformation.
Last October, Lo published an op-ed in the Taipei Times about the dangers of disinformation in Taiwan. In it she described misinformation as junk food for the mind: both can be exciting but are both terrible for our long-term well-being. In both cases, there also has to be something positive to replace it.
“As other communities’ experiences have shown, combating misinformation begins with connection, not correction,” she wrote.
While a strong legal framework and fact checking are important, personal connections can be the antidote to the noise that circles endlessly in our own echo chambers.
“You can't just say less disinformation or less junk food,” Lo said. “You have to say, ‘Well let's go have dinner together and make it a healthy dining experience that’s fun.'”
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