There is a new focus of tensions between China and the West, and it is the youngest’s favorite short video application, TikTok. This social network has more than a billion active users around the world and has managed to position itself as the sixth most used in the world in five years, an extraordinary achievement that is all the more remarkable because it is the product of Americas greatest geopolitical rival. The meteoric rise of Chinese tech giant ByteDance’s platform has come with growing distrust on both sides of the Atlantic amid fears Beijing could use it like a Trojan horse to access user data and further its own interests. Faced with increasing scrutiny, Washington, Brussels and Ottawa have banned use on their officials’ company phones, a decision that has infuriated the Asian giant, which sees the measure as a “politically motivated” ploy to increase “repression against Chinese companies”. to “curb” the development of the second largest economy in the world.
“How insecure must the world’s first superpower feel when it’s so scared of teenagers’ favorite job application?” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said during a daily news conference on Tuesday. A day earlier, the White House had given US government agencies 30 days to remove the TikTok app from all state devices.
The turn to criticism of the European Union came a day later, after the European Parliament joined steps taken by the Commission and the Council of the EU to veto the use of electronic terminals for their workers, as it poses a risk to the represents privacy and security. “The EU claims to be the most open market in the world […], but this practice undermines global trust. The EU should keep its word and promote an open, fair, transparent and non-discriminatory business environment for foreign companies,” Mao stressed.
an old threat
Concerns about whether TikTok poses cybersecurity threats are not new. Donald Trump nearly forced his expulsion from the United States in the summer of 2020, and since Joe Biden became president, the Commission on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) has been conducting an audit of his technology. In all that time, TikTok has only grown in influence and popularity: despite being banned in India, it was the most downloaded social network worldwide in the first quarter of 2022 and, according to a Google study from July last year, is the search engine of choice 40% of young people born between the late 1990s and mid-2000s (popularly known as Generation Z). There are more than 15.5 million registered accounts in Spain and it was the application that saw the greatest growth in downloads over the past year.
Part of TikTok’s appeal is its ability to perfectly predict which videos a person might want to watch, thanks to its sophisticated algorithm. The Application offers users the content that best suits their interests thanks to the collection of data on their preferences and viewing habits. Independent research has shown that the app has the capacity to save hourly contact lists, calendars, hard drives and locations. While no different from the practices of big US tech companies like Google or Meta, some governments’ concerns centered on the fact that Beijing could use national security law to oblige ByteDance to share this information. TikTok’s parent company has repeatedly denied these allegations.
a social phenomenon
Douyin, the version of TikTok available within China’s borders, is a true phenomenon at home. 80% of the 600 million daily users are between 19 and 40 years old and around 65% live in secondary cities. “It is not an exaggeration to say that we Chinese do research about Douyin. My mom sends me messages every day that she sees on the app,” says a Beijing native in her 30s whose family lives in the south. But despite belonging to the same house, Douyin and TikTok are entirely separate entities: their users cannot interact, and the two platforms are governed by different policies and registration processes, meaning the same search in the two apps will yield different results. . Douyin doesn’t release figures, but it was estimated at around €46,000 million in 2022, according to estimates by Chinese digital newspaper The Paper.
In the elevator, in the subway, in the canteen, everywhere someone usually uses the application, whose functionalities go far beyond those of TikTok. The Chinese version has evolved into a powerful e-commerce and consumer services platform that even has its own payment method. Carrie Feng, a 26-year-old streamer from Wuhan, says she got a job as a live clothes seller during the pandemic, which doubled her salary from a previous job at the university. It’s a path taken by many other young people during the health crisis. What he earned depended on his sales and customers not returning orders. During one of his broadcasts, three clicks were enough to buy a product through Douyin. The order was on its way in seven hours and at its destination in a few days.
“The work of a streamer is very hard. You have to talk for more than five hours a day, and it’s very tiring, both mentally and physically,” says Feng. “I started recording at 6:30 in the morning, which meant I had to get up at 4:00 to do my makeup. I finished work at 3:30 p.m. That pace affected my health.” However, he admits that he felt “a passion” for his work: “I love to share the things that make me feel good with other people.” He still feeds his own channel, in which he gives recommendations on the subject of water sports.
A group of fans watch the group Modern Brothers live broadcast on Douyin in Dandong city in 2018. QIBUZI (Visual China Group via Getty)
diplomatic tension
China has been very critical of movements from the West trying to limit the reach of its flagship application. “The United States is creating a new scandal because of the threats it faces: earlier this month it was the balloons; now it’s TikTok,” slammed an editorial in Chinese nationalist newspaper Global Times on Tuesday. Analysts close to Beijing believe Washington’s real concern is “the huge market share TikTok is taking with its unique technology and the tremendous benefits it is bringing.” According to eMarketer, 45.3% of social media users in the US use the app, compared to 24.2% globally. “The United States intends on the one hand to cut high-tech exports to China to weaken its manufacturing and technological competitiveness, and on the other hand to join forces with its allies to drive Chinese technology out of the international market,” Ding said in Global on Wednesday Times Gang, editor-in-chief of the People’s Daily, which is owned by the Communist Party.
But beyond cybersecurity, the power of TikTok is such that it adds a second fear: what kind of content is dominating the international youth market and to what extent does it manage to shape the thinking of the new generations? More than a billion people access the TikTok and Douyin platforms every day. Although censorship hasn’t been shown to be as prevalent on TikTok as it is on Douyin, human rights groups accuse ByteDance of regularly following orders from Beijing: videos of the 2019 Hong Kong protests have barely been published on TikTok and those denouncing it Alleged crackdowns on the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang are often eliminated. Although Russian state media Russia Today and Sputnik have blocked access to the international app, they have tens of thousands of followers on the Chinese one.
The role the platform has played in shaping opinions among its users around the world has been so important that many have dubbed the invasion of Ukraine the “TikTok War.” Despite the fact that ByteDance, the company that owns the TikTok and Douyin brands, has tried to position itself as an “impartial” agent from the start and that just four days after the attack began, it had removed more than 3,500 videos and 12,100 comments from Douyin “inappropriate” or “spreading disinformation” to date, the only news circulating in China about the war in Ukraine is the official one from the authorities, where the main culprit of the conflict is NATO.
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