The Chinese Communist Party and People’s Liberation Army view TikTok as one of several strategic tools for political influence operations and military support actions, according to an open-source intelligence report recently made public.
The report, written by two former military and intelligence experts, warns that Beijing will use the wildly popular short-video sharing app to target young people in the United States and “shift American narratives subtly to favor a more China-centric worldview.”
The researchers examined legislation President Biden signed in April to force TikTok’s China-based owner, ByteDance, to either sell the American operation to a buyer not linked to the Chinese government or be banned nationally. A month later, ByteDance filed a lawsuit saying the law violated the First Amendment.
The Justice Department contended in a legal filing last month that TikTok collects sensitive data on American users’ views of religion, abortion and gun control and censors online material at the direction of ByteDance. The company’s American management has denied the charge.
The research report, “TikTok Operations in the United States: Unveiling Strategic Moves, Scientific Insights and What Lies Ahead,” reveals the Chinese government’s plans to use short videos and other methods to promote communist ideology and narratives worldwide.
A 2022 study conducted by Hu Liang-quan with the Propaganda and Traditional Warfare Department of Hunan University states that TikTok’s extensive audience, vivid imagery and rich content are ideally suited for educating college students ideologically and politically.
The Chinese scholar’s study is titled “The Application and Enlightenment of TikTok in Ideological and Political Education for College Students.” It states that TikTok can be used to expand the channels for delivering ideological education to Americans born in the 1990s, a critical demographic target.
China, under President Xi Jinping, has reinvigorated a communist ideology it calls “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” This ideological approach was shelved in the 1980s to modernize the weak economy.
A 2023 government-funded report from the School of Marxism at Hefei University of Technology said China will enhance its global power by promoting cultural and ideological narratives.
“For TikTok, this could translate into a tailored approach where content is curated or suppressed based on strategic ideological priorities from Beijing, potentially manipulating public opinion inside the United States and possibly allied countries,” the report said.
For the People’s Liberation Army, TikTok supports a vital element of its 2014 information warfare strategy called three warfares: public opinion warfare, psychological warfare and legal warfare, the last of which is commonly called “lawfare.”
PLA control and influence over ByteDance through the civil-military “fusion policy” will be used for operations short of open warfare, the report said.
“The overlap between the Three Warfares doctrine and TikTok’s observed operations and techniques in the United States is perhaps the most noteworthy of all,” the Chinese report said.
The American research report was produced by the CCP BioThreats Initiative, a think tank. Its authors are Ryan Clarke, a strategic intelligence analyst, and L.J. Eads, a former Air Force intelligence officer.
“The recent findings by the Justice Department align with our research, which reveals that the [Chinese Communist Party] strategically targets Americans, including college students, to push its ideological and political narratives,” Mr. Eads told The Washington Times.
China’s efforts to “leverage platforms like TikTok to gather sensitive data and manipulate content reflect its broader goal of using discourse power to influence global public opinion,” he said.
The initiative’s research study also said it had found “considerable convergence between overt PLA doctrine on information warfare that was published in 2015 (Three Warfares) … the founding of TikTok in 2016, and subsequent Chinese scientific advances in the strategic types of influence operations used by TikTok in 2023.”
Asked about the initiative’s findings, TikTok spokesman Alex Haurek said in a statement that “this politically driven study is pure fiction and not worth commenting on.”
Building U.S. support
The report suggests that Chinese lawfare has helped TikTok build support for its case against divestment from U.S. groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union.
China’s information operations through TikTok are not seeking solely to spread official propaganda but also involve more nuanced and sophisticated long-term programs of shaping Americans’ perceptions and cultural attitudes over time, especially with U.S. youths, the report said. TikTok is thought to have about 170 million users in the United States.
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, joined TikTok two months ago and now boasts 9 million followers. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris also has joined the platform. The two candidates’ use of TikTok highlights how both major political parties see the app as a potent political tool for reaching younger voters.
Public opinion data shows that the most intensive users of TikTok are those ages 18 to 34.
The CCP BioThreats Initiative report said the legal battle over banning TikTok could become a significant election issue among younger voters.
“The strategic utilization of the TikTok platform inside the United States … underscores significant risks to the intellectual freedom, privacy and information integrity within America’s digital landscape,” the report states. “These risks are manifold, encompassing potential breaches of data privacy, the surveillance of users, manipulation of content and the systematic promotion of specific political narratives aligned with the interests of Beijing.”
Gordon Chang, a China expert with the Gatestone Institute, said the Chinese government has weaponized TikTok as an “instrument of war” by waging what Beijing calls “unrestricted warfare” on America.
“If you have TikTok on a device, you are getting what the Communist Party of China wants you to see,” Mr. Chang said. “The Chinese regime has used its algorithm to disseminate pro-Hamas disinformation, Russian narratives about the Ukraine war, and other pro-CCP propaganda.”
Collecting data
The Justice Department court filing on July 26 said information about the collection of Americans’ data was based on the discovery of a software tool that U.S. employees of TikTok and ByteDance can use to gather user information.
The Chinese can use TikTok to track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail and conduct corporate espionage, the document states.
“TikTok provides the Chinese government the means to undermine U.S. national security in two principal ways: data collection and covert content manipulation,” the document said.
Data collected on Americans includes age, phone numbers, precise locations, internet addresses, devices used, phone contacts, social media connections, private messages sent through TikTok and videos watched, the document said.
Casey Blackburn, a senior U.S. intelligence official, wrote in a filing supporting the government’s position that intelligence reporting “further demonstrates that ByteDance and TikTok Global have taken action in response to PRC demands to censor content outside of China.”
The research report by the CCP BioThreats Initiative predicted that a forced divestment of TikTok from ByteDance would likely lead to Chinese government retaliation and could speed up the decoupling of the two economies. A forced divestment also could destabilize the last few areas of bilateral cooperation, such as on climate change, between Beijing and Washington.
“Even in the event of an eventual forced ByteDance divestment of TikTok, it is unclear if Beijing will relinquish this hard-earned asset, or if Beijing will attempt to reinsert itself into TikTok’s new American structure through other indirect means,” the report said.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.