Hard calculations on Tiktok's soft power

How Tiktok's influence among younger Americans can become a tool in the hands of the Chinese state to manipulate US elections Gunjan Singh

Reframing China: TikTok, Soft Power, and the Battle for Global Narratives

By Shaoyu Yuan

Published by Palgrave Macmillan

103 pages ₹4,426

 In recent years, Tiktok has been the focus of geopolitical manoeuvring. During his second presidential term, US President Donald Trump pushed for a change in the ownership citing concerns over data and privacy because of Bytedance’s ownership and its closeness to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In 2024, Washington had approved a law that banned the app unless the ownership moved out of Chinese control. The app faced restrictions between January 2025 and January 2026. The ban was lifted after the majority ownership (80.1 per cent) moved to American investors. Tiktok was one of the 59 Chinese apps to be banned by India as a response to Chinese aggression during the Galwan clashes in 2020, and remains proscribed even today. 

 

Given this backdrop, Shaoyu Yuan’s book Reframing China: TikTok, Soft Power, and the Battle for Global Narratives is an interesting read. The central argument rests on how Beijing exploits Tiktok’s popularity to push its political and socio-cultural narratives. The book argues that, “… in order to implement its ideological strategy, China employs three primary channels: international organizations, education, and media, each serving a distinct purpose while contributing to the broader objective of redefining the global order”. 

In addition to Tiktok, the book also analyses Confucius Institutes and the Chinese media’s global presence. The author elaborates this with the help of the Power Transition Theory while arguing that, “China is utilizing TikTok as a powerful instrument to challenge the United States’ cultural and ideological dominance”. One of the central themes of the book is to provide an insight into the role of soft power as an essential tool in today’s geopolitical rivalry. 

Though the book offers a detailed analysis of the way Tiktok works as an important soft power tool for Beijing, it gets stuck in the loop of its own preconceived conclusion. Another drawback is that the book is quite repetitive even though the author engages with a range of arguments and numerous examples. However, his conclusion and the analysis remain the same: Tiktok’s primary task and goal is to engage in extending and propagating Chinese government’s agenda and pro-China narrative building. He writes, “… TikTok represents one of the most successful and efficient instruments China has ever deployed in its quest to reshape global perceptions.” 

This is not to say the author’s methodology and research are weak, but the subjective bias is hard to ignore. In two detailed chapters, Yuan provides a nuanced comparison of the quality and type of videos related to China that are regularly uploaded on Tiktok, Youtube, and Google Trends. The topics chosen for this study are Xinjiang, Xi Jinping, and Hanfu. The major challenge with such an analysis is that Youtube and Google Trends are banned/blocked in mainland China. The author indicates that he employs content analysis and artificial intelligence-assisted sentiment analysis to study the popularity of videos and topics related to China, especially in the United States. He concludes that Tiktok tends to highlight videos with a pro-China message, building a narrative of a benign, developed and culturally-rich nation. 

The author does acknowledge that the reason Tiktok is a geopolitical and security issue is about the ownership and security of the user data. The idea of internet sovereignty, which is being pushed by Xi Jinping, links the ownership of the data to the state storing it. The author asserts that the Chinese state, “…effectively transforms the app into a subtle, yet strategic tool in its broader endeavour to challenge the existing power balance”. 

The author also discusses how Tiktok and its reach and influence among younger Americans can become a tool in the hands of the Chinese state to manipulate the elections, undermining one of the major tenets of a liberal democratic order. “The platform is able to easily facilitate the creation and propagation of succinct, easily digestible political messages that can gain significant traction rapidly, thereby molding public sentiment and potentially influencing electoral outcomes,” he writes. 

The author’s arguments about Tiktok’s security and soft power agendas are valid, and the author explores various policy recommendations to mitigate this challenge. The censorship employed by Beijing is real, both domestic and global. However, a genuine soft power culture is yet to develop in China. For China to enjoy the fruits of soft power, the party will need to give it space to thrive. A command and control outlook makes it easy for the world to see through the CCP’s agenda and counter it.

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The reviewer is associate professor, OP Jindal Global University