LinkedIn profiles for a whole lot of ByteDance staff reveal shut connections between the corporate and China’s propaganda business.
Three hundred present staff at TikTok and its dad or mum firm ByteDance beforehand labored for Chinese language state media publications, in line with public worker LinkedIn profiles reviewed by Forbes.
Twenty-three of those profiles seem to have been created by present ByteDance administrators, who handle departments overseeing content material partnerships, public affairs, company social accountability and “media cooperation.”
Fifteen point out that present ByteDance staff are additionally concurrently employed by Chinese language state media entities, together with Xinhua Information Company, China Radio Worldwide and China Central / China International Tv. (These organizations have been amongst these designated by the State Division as “overseas authorities functionaries” in 2020.)
Fifty of the profiles signify staff that work for or on TikTok, together with a content material technique supervisor who was previously a Chief Correspondent for Xinhua Information.
The LinkedIn profiles reviewed by Forbes reveal important connections between TikTok’s dad or mum firm, ByteDance, and the propaganda arm of the Chinese language authorities, which has been investing closely in utilizing social media to amplify disinformation that serves the Chinese language Communist Occasion. Chinese language state media retailers have a big presence on platforms like Fb, Instagram, and Twitter, however to date, they’ve been comparatively quiet on TikTok.
In contrast to the opposite main platforms, nonetheless, TikTok doesn’t at the moment label accounts managed by Chinese language state media. In March, TikTok introduced a plan to label “some” state media entities, however a Forbes assessment of China’s largest state media entities on the platform, together with China Information Service, Xinhua Information Service, CGTN and the International Occasions, discovered no added context or labels indicating the accounts’ state management. (Disclosure: In a earlier life, I held coverage positions at Fb and Spotify.)
ByteDance and TikTok didn’t contest that the 300 LinkedIn profiles signify present staff or deny their connections to Chinese language state media. Not one of the state media retailers named on this story responded to a request for remark.
Jennifer Banks, a spokesperson for ByteDance, mentioned that ByteDance makes “hiring choices primarily based purely on a person’s skilled functionality to do the job. For our China-market companies, that features individuals who have beforehand labored in authorities or state media positions in China. Outdoors of China, staff additionally convey expertise in authorities, public coverage, and media organizations from dozens of markets.”
In response to the 15 profiles that present ByteDance staff concurrently employed by Chinese language state media, she added that ByteDance “doesn’t permit staff to carry second or part-time jobs, or any outdoors enterprise exercise, that might trigger a battle of curiosity.”
Individuals spend extra time on TikTok immediately than they do on every other app. In current months, the app has been hailed as a highly effective driver of American tradition, and has quickly emerged as a essential participant in our electoral and civic discourse. The LinkedIn profiles increase additional considerations that China might use TikTok’s broad cultural affect within the US for its personal ends, a concern that led a cohort of US politicians, together with former president Donald Trump, to name for a ban on the app in 2019.
ByteDance Headquarters on January 6, 2022 in Shanghai, China.
VCG/Getty Photographs
The profiles additionally present essential perception into how ByteDance manages its relationship with Chinese language state media entities. Along with TikTok, ByteDance runs quite a few different web sites and providers, together with two of mainland China’s hottest apps: Douyin (a brief type video app) and Toutiao (a information aggregator). Chinese language state media entities are among the many hottest accounts on Douyin, the place they’ve many hundreds of thousands of followers. Lots of the LinkedIn profiles element work on Toutiao and Douyin, which should adjust to stringent Chinese language censorship legal guidelines.
However 50 profiles additionally particularly talked about work on TikTok, in areas together with coverage, technique, operations, monetization, consumer expertise and localization (the method of adapting a product to suit the wants of overseas markets).
One profile, representing a present TikTok “characteristic technique lead,” says that individual beforehand labored for the China Web Info Middle, or china.org.cn, a state-run internet portal whose editor-in-chief can be a celebration secretary and former deputy head of propaganda for the Chinese language Communist Occasion. Banks mentioned that this particular person couldn’t have held a “senior-level” place as a result of they don’t seem to be a Chinese language nationwide. She confirmed they do work on ByteDance’s companies outdoors of China.
Per LinkedIn, the TikTok worker labored as an editor for the middle’s “China Growth Gateway” (chinagate.cn). Throughout their tenure, chinagate.cn printed headlines together with, “Safeguarding Xi’s core place is the important thing: communique,” “Underneath Xi’s watch, China’s sunshine island basks in heat of opening up,” and “Xi stresses significance of The Communist Manifesto.”
Each TikTok and ByteDance declined to reply questions on if they’ve collaborated with Chinese language state media entities to supply or distribute content material.
James Lewis, director of the Strategic Applied sciences Program on the Middle for Strategic and Worldwide Research, advised Forbes that he wasn’t shocked that numerous Chinese language state media staff would finally transfer over to ByteDance and TikTok. “It’s in all probability a traditional profession path; I’m certain ByteDance pays extra,” he mentioned, however “ties again to the outdated homestead is perhaps regarding.”
In current months, concern about TikTok has risen as a result of a string of recent experiences concerning the app’s hyperlinks to the Chinese language authorities. In June, BuzzFeed Information reported that ByteDance staff in China had repeatedly accessed delicate details about US TikTok customers, setting off a flurry of responses from legislators and regulators within the US and overseas. (TikTok confirmed the reporting in a late-June letter to 9 Republican senators.)
In July, BuzzFeed Information reported allegations by former staff that ByteDance had pushed pro-China messages to People in its now-defunct information app, TopBuzz, which was energetic between 2015 and 2020. (ByteDance denied the claims.) The TopBuzz report marked the primary claims that TikTok’s dad or mum firm had tried to make use of its content material distribution engine to affect People’ views about China. Simply days later, Bloomberg reported that the Chinese language authorities requested TikTok for permission to arrange a “stealth propaganda” account in 2020, which TikTok confirmed.
Based on Bloomberg, members of TikTok’s coverage division declined to grant the Chinese language authorities’s request for such an account. However a LinkedIn profile representing ByteDance’s deputy common supervisor of media cooperation suggests there could also be extra collaboration between Chinese language state media and ByteDance than that story suggests.
The profile states that the deputy common supervisor is “chargeable for the formulation of the cooperation technique between the corporate and the central media” and “cooperate[s] with companions in content material planning, knowledge mining, product interplay, enterprise, and so forth.” (Some quotes from LinkedIn profiles on this article have been initially written in Chinese language and translated by Google.)
An interview request despatched to this profile went unanswered. ByteDance declined to specify what “cooperation technique” the deputy common supervisor was referring to.
For this worker and the opposite ByteDance staff talked about beneath, ByteDance’s Banks confirmed that they “solely” work on the corporate’s China market companies.
The LinkedIn profiles increase additional considerations that China might use TikTok’s broad cultural affect within the US for its personal ends.
One other worker, now ByteDance’s vice common supervisor of media partnerships, beforehand ran social media for china.org.cn. Among the many portal’s social media posts throughout his tenure have been Fb posts titled, “Why China wants Xi Jinping as its core chief” and “Human Rights Hype Is not Good For The US Or China,” and a tweet asking, “Is Western ideology doomed to fail?” The worker didn’t reply to an interview request.
Different profiles additionally recommend experience in tailoring messages primarily based on customers’ on-line conduct: A profile for a present ByteDance director of presidency affairs cooperation described previous work for Individuals’s Every day—the newspaper of file of the Chinese language Communist Occasion—the place the now-director “analyz[ed] the studying habits of Web audiences and the id traits of mainstream occasion media audiences” and “with out violating the occasion’s propaganda coverage, actively carr[ied] out particular information planning” with native authorities workplaces. An interview request to this profile acquired no response.
Fifteen profiles additionally listed each ByteDance and a state media group as an individual’s present employer. The profile for one such worker, who has served as an editorial director at ByteDance since March 2019, says that she can be a present member of the editorial boards of the China Information Service, which is run by the United Entrance Work Division of the Chinese language Communist Occasion, and China Weekly, which is supervised by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League. The editorial director didn’t reply to an interview request.
The profile for one more such worker, a director of public relations, says that she can be a present “senior reporter and operations supervisor” at Beijing TV. The profile for a 3rd worker, an “Internation [sic] Operation Supervisor” at ByteDance, says that individual can be the present chief editor for worldwide information at Beijing Time (btime.com), a information web site affiliated with Beijing TV. Neither of those staff responded to interview requests.
Based on its About Us web page, Beijing Time “takes the dissemination of constructive power, mainstream voices, and Chinese language wonderful tradition as its personal accountability,” and “builds a media communication platform for Beijing’s patriotism training base for the Beijing Municipal Occasion Committee Propaganda Division.”
Chinese state media entities have lengthy used social media to focus on and affect Western audiences. Earlier this yr, China Central Tv (CCTV) and its world arm, China International Tv Community (CGTN), promoted Russian disinformation on Fb about Ukraine. The retailers beforehand ran adverts on the platform denying extensively documented human rights abuses perpetrated by the Chinese language authorities towards Muslim minorities. CCTV/CGTN didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Forbes recognized 49 LinkedIn profiles for TikTok and ByteDance staff who beforehand labored for CCTV and CGTN. Amongst them have been CCTV’s former editor-in-chief, who now serves as ByteDance’s director of media content material partnerships, and a ByteDance abroad market operator whose profile says he’s nonetheless an editor for CCTV.
Simply final month, Xinhua Information Company denied that China has compelled ethnic minorities into guide labor in Xinjiang, calling the experiences “fabricated false data.” The company has repeatedly posted denials of the federal government’s abuse of Uyghur communities, whereas additionally selling the native people artists of “Wondrous Xinjiang.” In 2019, the outlet ran adverts on Fb and Twitter to smear protestors in Hong Kong; earlier this yr, it ran extra, blaming Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on “NATO’s ambition to broaden eastward.” Xinhua Information didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The Communist Occasion loves TikTok and I’m certain they’re attempting to determine use it, which is unhealthy information for ByteDance.
Forbes discovered 39 profiles for present TikTok and ByteDance staff that beforehand labored at Xinhua. Based on these profiles, one former Xinhua reporter, who’s now the pinnacle of cooperation at ByteDance, received a number of authorities journalism awards. One other, who works in inside communications, is a former reporter for each Xinhua and Beijing Every day. Neither worker responded to an interview request.
Based on LinkedIn, one other 24 TikTok and ByteDance staff previously labored for Individuals’s Every day, an outlet that press freedom advocacy group Freedom Home has deemed “the official Chinese language Communist Occasion (CCP) mouthpiece.” Others have labored for China Every day and China Radio Worldwide (each registered overseas brokers, per the State Division) and China Youth Every day, the newspaper of the Communist Youth League of China.
ByteDance’s intensive connections to Chinese language state media publications—together with its lack of insurance policies for designating and monitoring their content material on TikTok—make it an outlier amongst social media giants. Whereas LinkedIn reveals that Google and Meta additionally make use of individuals who beforehand labored for Chinese language state media, the numbers are totally different by an order of magnitude.
Forbes recognized 23 profiles that seem to signify present staff at Google or YouTube, and 14 profiles of present staff at Meta, Fb, and Instagram, who beforehand labored for Chinese language state media. One in all these folks, Google’s senior most communications official for better China, spent greater than 15 years at China International Tv Community, the place he was a director, editor, reporter and anchor. (He didn’t reply to an interview request.) Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels declined to remark. Meta spokesperson Andrea Beasley acknowledged a request for remark, however didn’t supply remark by press time.
Lewis, the scholar at CSIS, cautioned towards studying too far into any particular person worker’s work historical past. However, he mentioned, “The Chinese language authorities might be attempting to poke round to determine—how can they use the knowledge they’re getting from watching TikTok to higher tailor their propaganda for a Western viewers?”
None of that is good for ByteDance, particularly as scrutiny about its ties with the federal government heightens. “The Communist Occasion loves TikTok and I’m certain they’re attempting to determine use it, which is unhealthy information for ByteDance,” Lewis mentioned. “As a result of being the Communist Occasion’s favourite youngster means undesirable consideration.”
