China’s efforts to dominate and potentially weaponise next-generation technologies are now garnering considerable attention. In October 2022, the Biden Administration imposed wide-ranging restrictions on China’s access to advanced chip technologies, and it is considering additional actions on quantum computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and biotechnologies. These measures come on top of broader Western efforts to constrain China’s growing dominance in telecommunications and surveillance technologies, such as those provided by Huawei, ZTE, Hikvision, and others.

Beyond their implications for weapons systems, these efforts reflect concerns regarding whose technologies will underlie our increasingly digital societies and what those technologies might be used for. Only recently, however, have the risks posed by China’s internet platforms—social media, e-commerce, and search applications such as TikTok, AliExpress, and WeChat—begun to be considered. With TikTok’s explosive growth in the United States, there is a surge in efforts to ban the app at local, state, and federal levels. Much of the concern has focused on the data collection and surveillance possibilities the Chinese-owned app might provide to Beijing. While those risks are real, the influence capabilities of TikTok are, surprisingly, only just gaining attention.

The growth and spread of Chinese platforms globally pose additional risks. In the West, these platforms are likely to be constrained through government regulation. But in much of the rest of the world, their proliferation offers China powerful influence capabilities that could be used (and in many cases already is being used) to undermine democratic institutions and processes, sow discord, and boost China’s image and interests. Given modern societies’ reliance on internet platforms, if Chinese platforms become preeminent in numerous countries around the world, they would contribute significantly to China’s command of the internet—and with it a commensurate diminishment of U.S. business, power, and global influence.