China-owned TikTok is pushing a slew of Chinese propaganda advertisements to millions of Europeans in recent months. The ads tout everything from support of Chinese coronavirus lockdowns to presenting the Xinjiang region, where Uyghur minorities are forced to work in concentration camps, as a wonderful tourist destination.
Propaganda ads from China’s largest state media outlets have been broadcast to millions of European users on the platform, according to TikTok’s new ad library, obtained by Forbes.
A demonstrator wears a mask painted with the colours of the flag of East Turkestan during a protest by supporters of the Uighur minority on April 1, 2021 at Beyazid square in Istanbul. (Photo by OZAN KOSE/AFP via Getty Images)
As of Wednesday, more than 1,000 ads from the communist regime’s state media outlets — such as People’s Daily and CGTN — have run on the platform since October 2022.
While the ad library does not yet display data on ads presented to users in the United States, Canada, and Australia, the data does show that the propaganda ads have appeared for millions of users across Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United Kingdom.
References to the troubled Xinjiang region reportedly appeared in 92 of the 124 ads promoted by one of the state media accounts.
One propaganda advertisement, paid for by China News International, featured a man doing a traditional dance under the caption “Xinjiang is a good place!” Another ad showed a CGTN host visiting an elementary school in Xinjiang.
The school is reportedly located in the Pishan County of Xinjiang, where the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has tracked the construction of six detention facilities.
Another ad featured a member of academia criticizing U.S. and European resistance to China’s exploitative Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), in which the communist regime offers predatory loans to poor countries meant to build infrastructure projects.
Another propaganda ad showed a video of a vlogger accusing Western media of lying about the Chinese government’s human rights abuses. This particular ad was running on TikTok as recently as last week.
Meanwhile, TikTok insists that it doesn’t allow advertising about social issues, elections, and politics — although the Chinese social media platform does note that “government entities may be eligible to advertise if working with a TikTok Sales Representative.”
TikTok’s ad library does not reveal how much the communist regime’s state media paid to post the propaganda ads on the platform, Forbes reported.
The revelations of these Chinese propaganda ads come as TikTok faces scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers over its ties to China and the security of users’ data. Moreover, TikTok is owned by the Chinese internet conglomerate ByteDance, which has already been caught snooping on U.S. and UK journalists in multiple instances.
As Breitbart News previously reported, ByteDance employees have obtained the private user data of U.S. journalists. The Chinese company was also recently discovered having tracked a UK journalist via her cat’s TikTok account, which didn’t even have her real name on it.
Meanwhile, a former ByteDance executive is warning the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has “supreme access” to all data held by TikTok’s parent company, including on servers in the United States. He added that the CCP even has a special office inside the company, which monitors Bytedance and TikTok, guiding the entities in advancing “core Communist values.”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.