MLI Report: TikTok Acting as China’s ‘Trojan Horse’ to Influence the West
Popular short-form video hosting app TikTok is “a Trojan Horse” used by Beijing to both access and influence Western democracies, according to an Ottawa-based think tank.
The report looks at Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s reported love of big data which it says is being used to “fuel China’s socio-economic development and tighten national security.”
Report author Sze-Fung Lee described the approach as a “key strategy” for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since Xi became president.
A 2013 article in the China News quoted Xi as saying that data is like the new “oil resources,” as it is transforming states’ comprehensive national power, and “whoever controls big data will have the upper hand,” the report noted.
This ambition for big data influences “how Beijing views and leverages TikTok for influence operations, and how data harvesting and mass surveillance fits into its grand strategy,” Mr. Lee wrote.
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The report examines how TikTok, with its billions of international users, is the Beijing’s ideal vehicle to harvest data and increase its digital surveillance while simultaneously widening its influence operations to boost the regime’s goals “in ways that other Chinese and Western social media platforms cannot.”
Data Collection
The report also takes a look at data privacy issues and how data collected by TikTok differs from Western social media platforms.
“The PRC utilizes it for digital surveillance and transnational repression via initiatives such as ‘Project Raven,’ which saw TikTok used to spy on Western journalists after they reported on the app’s repeated access of U.S. user data,” Mr. Lee wrote, adding that app data could be transferred to the PRC under China’s legal framework.
“Additionally, TikTok’s extensive global reach and pervasive data collection infrastructure imply that most of the PRC’s targets—journalists, activists, researchers, and China critics—could be subjected to Beijing’s mass surveillance, regardless of their geographic location and even if they are not using TikTok.”
Another way Beijing leverages TikTok is as a tool of misinformation as well as a means to push its desired political narratives and strategies, the report said. Some examples cited by the report are the disinformation campaigns during Taiwan’s presidential and legislative election; conspiracy theories claiming the U.S. created the COVID-19 virus; and rebukes of “Western lies” about use of forced labour in China.
The paper examines the use of TikTok’s “For You” algorithm which partially shares server codes with Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. Both apps are owned by ByteDance.
“These algorithm codes are likely subjected to the PRC’s regulations on internet censorship and recommendation algorithms—manipulating what videos are visible and amplified for users,” the author wrote.
Canadian Response
The targeting of Canadians and the implications of Canada doing little to stop it are also discussed in the study. The author urges Ottawa to take “concrete actions” to counter both foreign information manipulation and interference.
The author advocates for “the enforcement of ByteDance’s divestiture from TikTok” under the Investment Canada Act.
The federal Liberals ordered a national security review of TikTok last September, and the app has been banned from federal government devices. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has yet to offer any specifics about how Ottawa will protect Canadians’ security and privacy when it comes to TikTok.
In the U.S., the report recommends “executing the recently passed Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.”
“Given TikTok’s vast reach and influence, a key goal should be to compel it to divest from its Beijing-based parent company,” the author wrote. “It is imperative for like-minded democracies to take more rigorous measures to mitigate the risk posed by TikTok and ByteDance as soon as possible.”
TikTok filed a lawsuit on May 7 to block a new law requiring either the sale of the app by its Chinese parent company or its removal from app stores and web-hosting services. U.S. President Joe Biden signed the bill last month and it has since passed both legislative chambers with broad bipartisan support.
In a filing with a federal appeals court in Washington, TikTok challenged the constitutionality of the new law saying that the U.S. government infringed the First Amendment rights of TikTok and its hundreds of millions of users over national security concerns.
The new law sets the initial deadline for a TikTok sale by January 2025, and President Biden can decide to extend the deadline by another three months to allow the deal to be completed.
Teri Wu and The Canadian Press contributed to this report.
