TikTok Used by China for Promoting Anti-Israel Propaganda in the US: An Analysis
News Analysis
As the Israel Defense Forces carry out its ground offensive into the heart of the Gaza Strip to eradicate the terrorist group Hamas, the Chinese regime is using TikTok to spread its anti-Israel propaganda from China to the United States, aiming to influence the perspectives of American youth on the Israel–Hamas conflict.
TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance. Due to security concerns, President Joe Biden signed the No TikTok on Government Devices Act in December 2022, which prohibited downloading and using TikTok on all federal government devices. Over half of all U.S. states have either partially or entirely prohibited TikTok on government devices, according to a CNN analysis early this year.
TikTok’s promotion of pro-Palestinian content over pro-Israeli content can be viewed as the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) attempt to undermine the U.S.–Israel alliance and weaken U.S. influence in the Middle East.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) sent a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Nov. 7, requesting her to ban TikTok and all ByteDance-controlled apps in the United States. Mr. Hawley expressed concern that TikTok has the potential to “radically distort” the worldview of America’s youth. He pointed to a recent poll indicating that 51 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 believe that Hamas’s killing of Israeli civilians is justified.
American venture capitalist Jeff Morris Jr. posted on X, formerly Twitter, saying that as of Oct. 26, videos on TikTok with the hashtag “#standwithpalestine” were viewed 3 billion times, while “#standwithisrael” was viewed about 200 million times.
The disparity in the number of views may be due to TikTok’s algorithm. A social media platform’s ranking algorithm determines what content is ranked high and low and what is pushed to users. Therefore, the algorithm can influence how many times a post is viewed, which can, in turn, affect how many times it can be reposted.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March that TikTok “is ultimately within the control” of the Chinese regime. He said the recommendation algorithm could allow China to manipulate content and perform influence operations. Mr. Wray affirmed that TikTok can be used to drive narratives to divide Americans.
Consistent with TikTok’s anti-Israel bias is the CCP’s criticism of Israel and its implicit support for Hamas as propagandized by Chinese state media. A call with his Saudi Arabian counterpart on Oct. 15, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza, characterizing the military response as “beyond self-defense” and “collective punishment.”
The United States has mobilized its military power to the Middle East in support of Israel, including sending two carrier strike groups the following week after Hamas’s initial attack on Israel on Oct. 7. The Pentagon revealed that between Oct. 17 and Nov. 9, U.S. military bases and facilities in Iraq and Syria were attacked at least 46 times, with 56 injuries reported among U.S. troops. In response, the United States conducted multiple precision air strikes on facilities in the region operated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its affiliates in the past month and is still ongoing.
Cheng Chin-mo, chair of the Global Politics and Economics Department at Tamkang University of Taiwan, criticized the CCP’s reception of Mr. Assad. He said, “It is really embarrassing that [the] CCP has turned China [into] a supporter of terrorists.”
