TikTok executives will reject the plan, reports say Bloomberg after viewing internal communications. This is a message sent in April 2020 to Elizabeth Kanter, TikTok’s head of government relations for the UK, Ireland, Israel and the Netherlands.

A colleague allegedly showed Kanter a message in which “a branch of the Chinese government expressed an interest in participating on TikTok, but not openly as a government account because its main purpose is to promote the best side of China (a kind of propaganda)”. Kanter and his American colleague Erich Andersen will reject the request as “sensitive”.

TikTok talks about ‘informal requests’

TikTok doesn’t deny the situation, but downplays the request as an “informal request from an employee friend”, according to Bloomberg. “We have decided not to support this request as we believe creating such an account is against our own terms and conditions,” a TikTok spokesperson said.

TikTok has regulations against “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” meant to clamp down on sneaky political ads, for example.

TikTok has come under fire because of its China ties

TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, has often been criticized for its alleged ties to the Chinese government. In 2020, the US government described TikTok as a “mouthpiece of the Communist Party”. At the end of his term, then-President Trump did his best for months to force TikTok to be taken over by an American company. In the end, it didn’t happen.

TikTok, meanwhile, remains under fire. The company acknowledged earlier this month that some of its employees were Chinese have access to US user data. And America’s telecom regulator the FCC has it Apple and Google requested to remove TikTok from their app store due to concerns about how the app’s Chinese parent company handles user data. It hasn’t happened yet.