Introduction
Over the last four decades, China’s remarkable growth has shaped the world. With an average annual GDP increase of 9% since its economic reforms began in 1978, the country has lifted 800 million Chinese citizens out of poverty. Today, China is responsible for close to 5% of the world’s production. Now, China has shifted gears towards technological developments. With its dominance stretching from advancements in space robots to artificial intelligence, China is now in a position to become the world’s top technology leader.
China’s Political Influence
According to reports submitted under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), China has invested $280 million to influence U.S. politics. This investment has led to a significant presence of Beijing-backed individuals in American Chinese-language print, broadcast, and online media. According to research from the Hoover Institution, virtually all Chinese-language media in the U.S. is controlled by Beijing or by business people who support China. This could allow for the Chinese government to feed propaganda to consumers in the U.S. Beijing sees Chinese Americans as part of a global Chinese diaspora and assumes they still have political, cultural, and even religious ties to the so-called Motherland in addition to having an interest in the well-being of China.
Such actions affect people’s right to free expression in the U.S. and have an impact on their political views and voting decisions. Much of the demographic in the affected areas are in competitive congressional areas such as New York or California. Thousands of fake Chinese accounts that targeted Americans were found on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, according to a Freedom House Organization report from 2019. These accounts seem to ignite Americans’ rage on contentious topics such as social justice laws or the right to bear arms. In September 2022, Meta—owner of Facebook and Instagram—revealed that before the midterm elections, a China-based influence operation targeting American users with biased political content was found and removed. The following month, Google claimed to have discovered Beijing’s use of trolling and other strategies to try to polarize Americans leading up to the 2022 midterm elections.
Social Media: TikTok
Worries about the Chinese government’s access to user data have emerged regarding TikTok and other major social media platforms. While it remains uncertain if the software poses a security threat, TikTok has been prohibited on government-owned devices in several countries, including the U.S. A report from the Internet Governance Project suggests that techniques for gathering computer-based data from publicly available sources could potentially collect extensive information about users of various networking apps, as well as TikTok. A former employee of ByteDance, the parent firm of TikTok with headquarters in Beijing, has provided explicit allegations that the Chinese Communist Party accessed user data on a large scale and for political purposes.
US Response
Over the last four years, the United States has become more cautious about China. The Justice Department established the China Initiative to address national security concerns related to China. This initiative aimed to intensify efforts to identify Chinese agents in the U.S., particularly in academic and research fields. However, despite initiating numerous investigations, it allegedly relied on unreliable information too often, resulting in failure to substantiate accusations against the targets. Eventually, the initiative was terminated due to concerns that it unfairly singled out Chinese nationals and Chinese Americans without gathering substantial evidence against them. However, the Global Engagement Center (GEC) of the State Department and the FBI have improved their ability to spot Chinese misinformation online. Major IT firms have also identified evident state media online and have improved their ability to remove questionable posts.
Conclusion
FBI Director Christopher Wray claimed that China has a “breathtaking” strategy to steal information from the United States and influence American politics. The FBI has also claimed that Beijing poses a greater threat to political influence than Russia, however Chinese authorities have strongly objected to this characterization. Nevertheless, Chinese influence in American politics, media, and society seems to be growing and is expected to increase over the next few years. Despite efforts and claims to the contrary, it appears that the U.S. lacks an effective plan to prevent China from using a variety of media to gather information on U.S. citizens for their own purposes.
