The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and China’s military view TikTok as one of several strategic tools for both political-influence operations and military-support actions, according to an open-source intelligence report on the short-video sharing app.

The report by two former military and intelligence experts warns that continued use of TikTok in the United States will be used by Beijing to target young people and “shift American narratives subtly to favor a more China-centric worldview.”

The report made public recently examines the current legal requirement to force TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the American operation to a non-Chinese government-linked owner or be banned nationally.

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In April, President Biden signed the divestment requirement into law. A month later ByteDance sued to oppose the law, saying it violates the First Amendment.

The Justice Department revealed in a legal filing last week that TikTok collects sensitive data on American users’ views of religion, abortion and gun control, and censors online material at the direction of ByteDance.

The research report, “TikTok Operations in the United States: Unveiling Strategic Moves, Scientific Insights and What Lies Ahead,” reveals CCP plans for the use of short videos and other methods to promote communist ideology and narratives around the world.

One 2022 study by Hu Liang-quan with the Propaganda and Traditional Warfare Department of Hunan University, states that TikTok’s large audience, vivid imagery and rich content are ideally suited for educating college students ideologically and politically.

The Chinese scholar’s study is titled “The application and enlightenment of TikTok in ideological and political education for college students.” It states that TikTok can be used to expand the channels for delivering ideological education to Americans born in the 1990s, a key demographic target.

China under President Xi Jinping has reinvigorated communist ideology it calls socialism with Chinese characteristics that was shelved in the 1980s to better modernize the weak economy.

Another 2023 government-funded report from the School of Marxism at Hefei University of Technology said China’s power will be enhanced globally through promoting cultural and ideological narratives.

“For TikTok, this could translate into a tailored approach where content is curated or suppressed based on strategic ideological priorities from Beijing, potentially manipulating public opinion inside the United States and possibly allied countries,” the report said.

Militarily, TikTok supports a key element of the People’s Liberation Army 2014 information warfare strategy called “three warfares” — public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare, the last of which is commonly called “lawfare.”

PLA control and influence over ByteDance through the current civil-military fusion policy will be used for non-kinetic warfare, the report said.

“The overlap between the Three Warfares doctrine and TikTok’s observed operations and techniques in the United States is perhaps the most noteworthy of all,” the Chinese report said.

The American research report was produced by the China BioThreats Initiative, a think tank. Its authors are Ryan Clarke, a strategic intelligence analyst, and L.J. Eads, a former Air Force intelligence officer.

“The recent findings by the Justice Department align with our research, which reveals that the CCP strategically targets Americans, including college students, to push its ideological and political narratives,” Mr. Eads told The Washington Times.

“The CCP’s efforts to leverage platforms like TikTok to gather sensitive data and manipulate content reflect its broader goal of using discourse power to influence global public opinion,” he said.

The Initiative’s research study also said there is “considerable convergence between overt PLA doctrine on information warfare that was published in 2015 (Three Warfares) … the founding of TikTok in 2016, and subsequent Chinese scientific advances in the strategic types of influence operations used by TikTok in 2023.”

The report suggested that Chinese lawfare is behind TikTok getting support in its case against divestment from U.S. groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, a liberal advocacy group.

China’s information operations through TikTok are not solely seeking to impose propaganda but involve more nuanced and sophisticated long-term programs of shaping Americans’ perceptions and cultural attitudes over time, especially with U.S. youths, the report said.

TikTok is believed to have around 170 million users in the United States.

Former President Donald Trump joined two months ago and now boasts 9 million followers. Presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris also recently joined TikTok.

The two candidates’ use of the platform highlights both major political parties’ desire to exploit TikTok as a political tool in reaching younger voters.

Public opinion data shows the most intensive users of TikTok are those between the ages of 18 and 34.

The China BioThreats Initiative report said the legal battle over potentially banning TikTok could become a major election issue among younger voters.

“The strategic utilization of the TikTok platform inside the United States … underscores significant risks to the intellectual freedom, privacy and information integrity within America’s digital landscape,” the report states.

“These risks are manifold, encompassing potential breaches of data privacy, the surveillance of users, manipulation of content and the systematic promotion of specific political narratives aligned with the interests of Beijing.”

TikTok spokesman Alex Haurek said in a statement that “this politically driven study is pure fiction and not worth commenting on.”

Gordon Chang, a China expert with the Gatestone Institute said the Chinese government has weaponized TikTok as an “instrument of war” by waging what Beijing calls “unrestricted warfare” on America.

“If you have TikTok on a device, you are getting what the Communist Party of China wants you to see,” Mr. Chang said. “The Chinese regime has used its algorithm to disseminate pro-Hamas disinformation, Russian narratives about the Ukraine war, and other pro-CCP propaganda.”

The Justice Department court filing July 26 said information about the collection of Americans’ data was based on discovery of a software tool that can be used by U.S. employees of TikTok and ByteDance to gather user information.

The Chinese can use TikTok to track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage, the document states.

“TikTok provides the Chinese government the means to undermine U.S. national security in two principal ways: data collection and covert content manipulation,” the document said.

Data collected on Americans includes age, phone numbers, precise locations, internet addresses, devices used, phone contacts, social media connections, private messages sent through TikTok, and videos watched, the document said.

Casey Blackburn, a senior U.S. intelligence official, wrote in a filing supporting the government’s position that intelligence reports “further demonstrates that ByteDance and TikTok Global have taken action in response to PRC demands to censor content outside of China.”

The research report by the China BioThreats Initiative stated that forced divestment of TikTok from ByteDance likely would lead to some type of Chinese government retaliation and could speed up the decoupling of the two economies that is now underway.

A forced divestment also could destabilize the last few areas of shared interest, such as on climate change, between Beijing and Washington.

“Even in the event of an eventual forced ByteDance divestment of TikTok, it is unclear if Beijing will relinquish this hard-earned asset, or if Beijing will attempt to reinsert itself into TikTok’s new American structure through other indirect means,” the report said.