Chinese Government Asked TikTok for Stealth Propaganda Account

A public relations department of the Chinese government tried to set up a covert account on TikTok that would spread propaganda to Western viewers, says Bloomberg according to private messages it has acquired.

The initiative, which was rejected by TikTok executives, shows internal conflicts within the rapidly expanding social media app, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Inc. and has made repeated efforts to remove itself from Chinese official influence.

In an April 2020 message sent to Elizabeth Kanter, TikTok’s head of government relations for the UK, Ireland, Netherlands, and Israel, a TikTok coworker flagged a Chinese government entity that’s interested in joining TikTok but would not want to be openly seen as a government account. The main purpose of this account was to promote content that showcases the best side of China which was some sort of propaganda.

According to the messages, some of ByteDance’s most senior government relations team members, including Kanter and Erich Andersen, a global head of corporate affairs and general counsel based in the US, internally discussed the issue but rejected the request because the team deemed it to be “sensitive.” According to the communications, TikTok leveraged the incident to start a conversation within the company about other delicate demands.

A TikTok representative characterized the incident as an informal request from a friend of an employee and stated, “We declined to offer support for this request, as we believed the creation of such an account would violate our Community Guidelines.”

According to the spokeswoman, TikTok prohibits political advertising as well as “organized inauthentic behaviour,” in which users pretend to be someone else in order to exert influence or manipulate public opinion.

Some Chinese official organizations, such as the Chinese embassy in the US, are permitted to maintain verified profiles on TikTok. The business intends to include additional governmental organizations in the “coming months” by expanding its state-controlled media policy, which currently only applies to state-run accounts. Andersen and Kanter are yet to make comments. An inquiry for comment was also not responded to by the Chinese authorities.

The communications surfaced the same week that UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss pledged to take action against Chinese-owned businesses, including TikTok, in a debate with Rishi Sunak as part of their bids to succeed Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, criticized Truss’s comments on Monday.

Zhao at a press briefing in Beijing on Tuesday said “I want to make it clear to certain British politicians that making irresponsible remarks about China, including hyping up the so-called China threat, cannot solve one’s own problems.”

TikTok has experienced tension as a result of the Chinese government’s involvement in ByteDance as it has grown overseas. The Trump administration alleged TikTok was “a mouthpiece” for the Communist Party in September 2020 as part of a campaign to have the app banned in the US if it didn’t sell to an American company.

In the same month, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute noted in a report that TikTok frequently obscures or conceals words that reflect political movements, such as criticism of Vladimir Putin, as well as hashtags pertaining to gender, sexual orientation, and religion in most of the nations where it is used. Just at that period, TikTok vehemently denied that it would comply with any demands made by the Chinese government.

Social entertainment platforms like Douyin, the Chinese counterpart of TikTok, Bilibili Inc., and Weibo Corp. are used by a sea of government apparatus, state-sanctioned influencers, and hawkish news organizations to spread propaganda amongst China’s youth.

One of Douyin’s top creators, the Youth League, the Communist Party’s division for younger members, has approximately 8 million followers, double Taylor Swift’s. The local app store-available Douyin is operated independently. Both TikTok and Douyin concentrate on creating and sharing short videos, however, Douyin has content restrictions to adhere to Chinese legislation. According to the messages received by Bloomberg, the Chinese government requested advice on how to manage a profile that was appealing to a Western audience and that “they also discussed payment.”