Chinese Strategists Admit TikTok Part of Psychological War Against America
The evidence is more than clear that Beijing is conducting psychological operations against the American people by means of some of the most popular social media apps. China doesn’t even deny it — and Biden is doing nothing about it.
Harrowing research conducted by author Peter Schweizer and compiled in his new book, Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans, documents the depth to which China’s communist regime is using TikTok to propagandize American youth.
As seen in Schweizer’s book, Chinese strategists themselves have admitted that TikTok is a platform by which they wage “information-driven mental warfare” against the U.S.
Schweizer, who is a Breitbart News senior contributor and serves as the president of the Government Accountability Institute, remarks that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is “wedded to the Chinese Communist Party military-intelligence-industrial complex,” and explains that the addictive video-sharing app is used by the CCP to mold the minds of American minors.
Notably, the Chinese government does not allow its own people to use TikTok, and it has designated the app and its algorithm as a “national security asset.”
In his book, Schweizer quotes from restricted Chinese documents, including a journal in which Colonel Dai Xu, a professor at the People’s Liberation Army National Defense University (PLA-NDU, China’s most prestigious military academy), referred to apps like TikTok as a “modern-day Trojan horse.”
The author of Blood Money goes on to summarize the writings of PLA strategist Zeng Huafeng of the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) and his theory about defeating the United States without firing a shot:
Zeng defines the “cognitive space” as “the area in which feelings, perception, understanding, beliefs, and values exist” and argues that this is where the battle can be won. To that end, he said, Beijing must use “information and popular spiritual and cultural products as weapons to influence people’s psychology, will, attitude, behavior and even change the ideology, values, cultural traditions and social systems.” According to Zeng, these cultural tools, including apps, video games, and films, should be used to “target individuals, groups, countries, and even people around the world.”
Furthermore, Zeng proposes several methods by which China can win “mind superiority.” These include “perception manipulation,” or changing how people interpret the present; “cutting off historical memory” by changing people’s understanding of the past; “changing the paradigm of thinking” by altering the way people view problems; and “deconstructing symbols,” wherein they get people to reject their nation’s traditional cultural symbols.
“The ultimate goal is to manipulate a country’s values and achieve strategic goals without an actual overt military battle,” writes Zeng.
In a report titled Chinese Disinformation Efforts on Social Media, Chinese strategists called for “subconscious messaging” to be used instead of obvious political propaganda. In another report, titled Communicating Our Military’s Advanced Military Culture to the World, Chinese strategist Xu Sen writes of “softening” content so as to adopt political messages in stories.
Peng Zhen-gang, the deputy director of the Propaganda Department, wrote in one report of the important role entertainment plays in psychological warfare. “Entertainment is the main motivation for Generation Z content consumption,” he stated, adding that a better understanding of the minds of those they are targeting allows the Chinese regime to “explore effective communication strategies and paths, [and] improve the ability to set agendas.”
Chinese propagandists have observed that for young Western individuals, propaganda carries more influence when it originates from multiple sources rather than a single one. They likened this phenomenon to a “choir of communication subjects singing their own melody.” Schweizer emphasizes that the crucial aspect is to replicate a sense of community or peer group, a simulation achieved effectively by platforms like TikTok.
Schweizer discovered that the Chinese government directly financed a study on “digital propaganda and opinion manipulation in social media platforms.” The study revealed that “emotional content” has the potential to give the audience a sense of independent thinking, leading them to associate irrational emotions with concepts like righteous indignation or empathy, thereby amplifying the impact of the brainwashing.
The compelling nature of TikTok, characterized by its addictiveness and continuous flow of short, frequently over-stimulating videos, makes it a potent platform for disseminating propaganda.
But China hasn’t made TiktTok a success on its own. As Schweizer notes in his book, American celebrities have played a major part in bolstering Beijing’s propaganda machine.
“Despite its links to the Chinese propaganda apparatus, TikTok has thrived with the help of American celebrities and thought leaders who are either ignorant or ambivalent about TikTok’s true nature,” Schweizer writes. He points to celebrities like late-night host Jimmy Fallon, who promoted TikTok to his audience without disclosing that his program had entered into a partnership with the Chinese firm.
The psychological war China is waging against America is arguably just as destructive in the long term as the launching of rockets and the firing of rifles. Will the United States take swift action to confront the destruction, or allow the gradual mental assault on the nation’s youth to continue?
