An AP investigation highlights China’s rapidly growing influence on U.S.-owned social media platforms, including through a network of social media personalities who parrot the government’s perspective in posts that get hundreds of thousands of views.
The influencer network allows Beijing to easily proffer propaganda to unsuspecting Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube users around the globe. At least 200 influencers with connections to the Chinese government or its state media are operating in 38 different languages, according to“You can see how they’re trying to infiltrate every one of these countries,” said Miburo President Clint Watts, a former FBI agent. “It is just about volume, ultimately.
The personalities do not proactively disclose their ties to China’s government and have largely phased out references in their posts to their employers, which include CGTN, China Radio International and Xinhua News Agency. But the AP found in its review that most of the Chinese influencer social media accounts are inconsistently labeled as state-funded media. The accounts — like those belonging to Li Jingjing and Vica Li — are often labeled on Facebook or Instagram, but are not flagged on YouTube or TikTok. Vica Li’s account is not labeled on Twitter. Last month, Twitter began identifying Li Jingjing’s account as Chinese state-media.
Zang, a video blogger for CGTN, rarely mentions her employer to her 1.3 million followers on Facebook. Facebook and Instagram identify her account as “state-controlled media” but she is not labeled as such on TikTok, YouTube or on Twitter, where Zang lists herself as a “social media influencer.” “They want to promote a positive vision of China to drown out their human rights records,” Brandt said.
It’s unclear what the public saw from that campaign, and if the social media posts were properly labeled as paid advertisements by the Chinese Consulate, as Instagram and TikTok require. Vippi Media has not provided the Justice Department, which regulates foreign influence campaigns through a 1938 statute known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a copy of the posts it paid influencers to disseminate, even though federal law requires the company to do so.
“It’s not leaflets and hard copy newspapers anymore,” FARA unit chief Jennifer Kennedy Gellie said of messaging. It’s “tweets and Facebook posts and Instagram images.”A growing chorus of English-speaking influencers has also cultivated an online niche by promoting pro-Chinese messaging in YouTube videos or tweets.
Lightfoot, who did not respond to requests for comment, does not disclose this relationship with CGTN on his YouTube profile, where he has accrued millions of views with headlines like “The Olympics Backfired on USA — Disastrous Regret” and “Western Media Lies about China.” The Western influencers routinely decry what they see as distorted American media coverage of Beijing and life there. Some posts, for instance, have ridiculed Western concerns over the safety of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai,after leveling sexual assault allegations against a former high-ranking member of China’s ruling Communist Party.
“When I first saw this video,” he says by way of narration, “I actually thought it was from a movie. I thought it was from a zombie movie or some kind of end-of-the-world movie. But it’s not. This is real. This is America.”
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