As the US federal budget cuts have prompted political uproar and widespread concern, the Taiwanese Legislative Yuan (the ultimate legislative organization in Taiwan) has also reduced the government’s 2025 budget by 6.6 percent, the steepest budget drop in recent years. Like in the United States, budget cuts have sparked heated debates in Taiwanese society, with much false information circulating online to add to the confusion and get caught up with partisan discourse. The overwhelming volume of information, the complexities of the issues, and the lack of timely minutes of legislative sessions have all made debunking budget-slashing rumors a daunting task.
Following the presidential and legislative elections in January 2024, Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan has become entangled in political party conflicts. While the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won the presidential election, the largest opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT, or Chinese Nationalist Party), gained a majority in the Legislative Yuan. Since then, the KMT has worked with another minor party, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), to challenge the DPP on multiple legislative issues. Since the ruling DPP has fewer seats in the Legislative Yuan, the administration has experienced increasing difficulty in getting their preferred bills passed, including the central government’s budget bill. In the recent legislative session, the opposition parties significantly reduced the government’s budget plan.
On January 21, 2025, following a 20-hour, non-stop discussion and voting session, the Legislative Yuan approved the 2025 central government budget. This budget included cuts to the government’s general operating expenses, military equipment and facilities, academic research, media promotion, campaigns for policies and international diplomacy, as well as spending freezes in several government branches.
Misinformation Spreads Amid Budget Debates
The government budget has often received little attention in the past due to its high level of sophistication and complexity. However, given the increasing division in Taiwanese society and concerns about China exerting influence in Taiwanese politics through legislators aligned with the Chinese government, the 2025 budget garnered significant attention this year.
Since October 2024, when the Taiwanese government announced and submitted the budget proposal to the Legislative Yuan, rumors surrounding the budget bill have circulated online, focusing on specific topics, such as the plan to build submarines in the defense budget. Individuals and groups affected by the budget cuts, along with concerned citizens, posted and shared messages about the cuts on social media. TV talk shows frequently invited guests to comment on the reductions. While some of the comments provided accurate information, many were mixed with false messages or exaggerated rumors. The number of rumors surged one week before the budget was approved, peaking on January 22, 2025, the day after the Legislative Yuan passed the budget.
False Claims and Their Real-World Consequences
Among the widely circulated false information, most of the claims relate to issues that significantly impact people’s lives, such as welfare, government services, and disease preparation and prevention. For instance, a false claim asserted that farmers over the age of 65 would lose their longtime benefits from the government. The Taiwan FactCheck Center (TFC) determined this rumor to be untrue. According to the TFC’s report, although a KMT legislator proposed cutting the operational expenses associated with distributing benefits to senior farmers, the bill was withdrawn later by the legislator before it could be presented for a vote in the legislature.
Some of the false information took advantage of unrelated breaking news and emerged during irrelevant events. For example, a celebrity passed away in early February due to pneumonia caused by the flu. Although the celebrity’s death occurred after the budget cut was passed in the Legislative Yuan, false information still exploited the tragic event, inciting people’s fears that the budget cut would affect the availability of flu vaccines.
Among the false claims was one stating that KMT legislators slashed about $300,000 USD from the budget for purchasing vaccines. However, the fact is that the $300,000 budget for the vaccines was not “cut” but frozen, meaning that the funds could still be accessible if the Taiwanese Centers for Disease Control submits a report to the Legislative Yuan explaining the reasons for “unfreezing” the budget and obtaining legislators’ approval to use it. Nevertheless, scholars also noted that a request to “unfreeze” the budget does not necessarily guarantee that legislators will give the permission.
The rumor about the vaccine budget’s “freeze” also highlights that in budget cut rumors, there are various layers of facts, and many of these rumors only reveal the surface rather than offering more comprehensive information and context. Nonetheless, incomplete information is already powerful enough to provoke audience reactions and create a misinterpretation of the facts. For fact-checkers, one of the challenges is to break down the layers of fact and provide sufficient information for audiences to identify errors in the false information and understand the true facts.
What makes the rumors more prevalent and the debunking more difficult is that sometimes, political parties disseminated inaccurate or partial information that was advantageous to their causes. It was not uncommon for politicians or supporters of the parties to spread messages that offered shocking, brief content while omitting intricate yet essential details.
A notable trend was that political camps frequently produced and shared graphics that went viral online, featuring catchy phrases and concise messages to defend their positions on budget cuts. However, although these graphics simplify messages and make them easy to grasp, they are not ideal for explaining complex issues. As a result, these graphics often led to greater confusion in discussions. The graphic below is an example of an attempt to present information to correct the rumor that “the budget cut will make it more difficult for people living in central and southern Taiwan to apply for a passport.” Nevertheless, this “debunking” message only presents part of the facts.
Alongside politicians eager to criticize the opposing party and defend their own positions, those who initiated and spread false information about budget cuts included online influencers and guests on TV talk shows. Conversely, malicious actors from abroad were much less seen in pushing disinformation.
Challenges in Verifying Budget-Related Rumors
For fact-checkers, one of the challenges of debunking the rumors during this budget-cut debate is the complexity of the issue and the overwhelming volume of information. Given that government budget and legislative processes are highly specialized, fact-checkers need additional time and expert assistance to interpret the technical language. The high volume of false information further complicated the debunking efforts. Since the government budget encompasses a wide range of sectors, rumors have targeted various fields, from agriculture to high tech and from everyday operational costs to special expenses. Moreover, the lengthy legislative process and the revisions of bills also exacerbated the situation: even after a bill had been amended, outdated rumors concerning the previous version continued to circulate and misled the public.
Another significant challenge in fact-checking the budget rumors is the absence of reliable minutes from the legislative session. If minutes had been available soon after the budget review and voting session, fact-checkers could have more easily verified the information regarding the bill. Typically, the meeting minutes would be published shortly after legislators confirm their accuracy. However, due to the Lunar New Year break, the minutes were not released until February. Without written records, fact-checkers had to examine the 20-hour-long video recording to gather information.
Faced with the growing challenges of dispelling rumors about budget cuts, fact-checkers also sought help from other civic groups. Fact-checkers at the Taiwan FactCheck Center consulted open data and data journalism organizations to promptly extract information from the bills, supplementary materials, and video recordings of the session. For instance, Openfun, a company that advocates for open data, developed AI technology to transcribe the legislative session video, while Readr, a media outlet specializing in data journalism, created a platform for gathering and analyzing budget bills. The tools developed by these groups greatly aided fact-checkers in delivering timely fact-checking results.
Wei-Ping Li is a research fellow at the Taiwan FactCheck Center.
Yun-Kai Hsu (fact-checker at the Taiwan FactCheck Center) contributed to this analysis.