Detecting PRC Proxies on TikTok – “Two Tea Eggs” and Others

Summary

TikTok account Two Tea Eggs (兩顆茶葉蛋, 2TE) has published the most-viewed video regarding the Kinmen speedboat incident on the platform during the event. DA.69 IORG and partner research organizations have independently found that 2TE videos use footage identical to those found in PRC state media Douyin videos. IORG investigates and confirms in this report the co-production of video content among PRC state media Douyin accounts and anonymous TikTok accounts, assessing the likelihood of PRC proxies on TikTok.

2TE is likely a proxy TikTok account controlled by PRC state media, while the controlling PRC entity is yet to be identified. Speech analysis has found 106 pairs of TikTok videos published by 2TE using identical footage as Douyin videos published by 5 Taiwan-related PRC state media Douyin accounts: Taiwan.cn (中国台湾网), Taihai Net (台海网), Strait Herald (海峡导报), Haixia Net (海峡网), and Huaxia Jingwei (华夏经纬网), controlled by government, state media, and state-sanctioned private entities in the PRC. Some 2TE TikTok videos are published before their Douyin counterparts, indicating that the production processes are separate between 2TE and the state media Douyin accounts.

Additionally, Wan-wan Generator (灣灣發電姬) is likely a proxy TikTok account controlled by PRC state media Fujian Daily News Group, parent entity of Strait Herald (海峡导报). Visual analysis identifies 5 pairs of identical videos from Wan-Wan Generator (TikTok) and Strait Herald (Douyin). 3 were videos relocated from Douyin to TikTok and 2 were videos published on TikTok before Douyin. What Does Taiwan Say (台灣蝦米貢) and Sitting in a Well Looking at the Sky (坐井觀天) are 2 other TikTok accounts that relocate videos from Strait Herald to TikTok with a delay between 20 minutes and 42 hours. These 2 accounts could be either proxies of PRC state media or volunteers amplifying state media content.

PRC information manipulation and propaganda is more effective when composed and disseminated via unofficial accounts on an international platform such as TikTok. TikTok videos with identical footage and different composition perform better than their Douyin counterpart. Given that much more Taiwanese people use TikTok than Douyin, cultivating TikTok proxies is a reasonable and effective strategy for PRC content to reach its intended Taiwanese audience. Therefore, data-driven research on TikTok content and account activities is essential to assist the Taiwanese public in assessing the risks associated with using TikTok.

Image: View count comparison of PRC state media Douyin videos and Two Tea Eggs (2TE) TikTok videos using identical footage. Source: IORG Archive.

Data Source

This report uses content and metadata originally published by the following TikTok and Douyin accounts, which are subsequently retrieved, processed, and stored in IORG Archive, which is maintained independently by IORG.

• Douyin videos published by Taiwan.cn (中国台湾网), controlled by Taiwan Work Office under the CCP Central Committee (eq. Taiwan Affairs Office under the PRC State Council).
• Douyin videos published by Taihai Net (台海网), Strait Herald (海峡导报), and Haixia Net (海峡网), controlled by Fujian Daily News Group (福建日报报业集团) under the CCP Fujian Provincial Committee.
• Douyin videos published by Huaxia Jingwei (华夏经纬网), controlled by Huaxia Jingwei Information Technology (华夏经纬信息科技有限公司), a state-sanctioned private entity.
• TikTok videos published by 74 anonymous TikTok accounts previously appeared in IORG reports and analysis.

Method

Speech Analysis

• Audio component of videos are transcribed into transcripts using an open-source version of Whisper, a speech recognition technology provided by OpenAI.
• Transcriptions are romanized to homogenize homophones, variant characters, and common mistakes in automatic transcription such as the name of people and locations.
• Romanized transcripts are divided into strings of 10-character in length using a sliding window.
• Strings are considered identical when matched exactly.
• Pairwise similarity scores are calculated with the number of identical strings between 2 videos.

Visual Analysis

• Visual component of videos are resized to 460*240 pixels and sampled every 2 seconds.
• Overlay all samples of a video to calculate the average RGB values of each pixel, producing an average pixel map of the video.
• Pixels are considered identical when differences in RGB values are all below 30.
• Pairwise similarity scores are calculated using the number of identical pixels between 2 average pixel maps of 2 videos.

Speech Analysis Results

106 confirmed occurrences of identical footage

• Speech analysis has detected 106 occurrences of identical footage between a 2TE TikTok video and a PRC state media Douyin video, appearing in 66 videos out of 536 videos published by 2TE during the time period.
• These 66 videos have accumulated a total view count of 2.03 million, averaging at 30,790 views per video, 24.32% lower than the average view count among all 2TE videos.

• Strait Herald is the PRC state media account closest to 2TE, with 32 occurrences of identical footage. Taiwan.cn is the next, with 31 occurrences.
• 59 occurrences of identical footage are footage sourced from Taiwanese political talk shows, in which political commentators and other public figures comment on current events, accounting for 55.66% of the total 106 occurrences. Other types of footage include interviews and press conferences of PRC officials, including spokespersons of the Taiwan Affairs Office and the Foreign Ministry.
• Sourcing of identical footage, often segments of much longer programming, with identical duration and frame indicates coordinated video production among 2TE and the PRC state media Douyin accounts.

41.5% of the identical footages published on TikTok earlier than on Douyin

• 44 occurrences of identical footage have been published on TikTok earlier than Douyin, accounting for 41.51% of the total 106 occurrences.
• Mixed publishing schedule between TikTok and Douyin indicates complexity in the coordination of actors in the production effort.

1.8x amplification on TikTok

• 2TE TikTok videos are amplifying the engagement of footage also used in PRC state media Douyin videos. 2TE TikTok videos with occurrences of identical footage have in total accumulated 3.06 million views, 1.79x of the 1.71 million views on Douyin.
• Amplification is most apparent with 2TE videos using identical footages as videos by Huaxia Jingwei, accumulating a total of 352,144 views on TikTok, 307.28x of the 1,146 views on Douyin.

Visual Analysis Results

23 nearly identical videos

• Visual analysis has detected 23 videos published by 5 anonymous TikTok accounts: that are nearly identical to videos published by PRC state media Douyin accounts.
• The 5 TikTok accounts are: What Does Taiwan Say (台灣蝦米貢), Sitting in a Well Looking at the Sky (坐井觀天), Wan-Wan Generator (灣灣發電姬), North Village (北村), and Wolf Child Wild Heart (用户 8690403119451 狼子野心).
• These 23 videos have accumulated a total view count of 171,927, averaging at 7,475 views per video, 19.28% of the average view count of 38,769 accumulated all videos published by the 5 TikTok accounts.

2 videos published on TikTok earlier than Douyin with PRC state media logo visible

• 19 out of the 23 videos are published by 3 anonymous TikTok accounts What Does Taiwan Say (台灣蝦米貢), Sitting in a Well Looking at the Sky (坐井觀天), and Wan-Wan Generator (灣灣發電姬), all nearly identical to those published by Strait Herald (海峡导报).
• 17 of the nearly identical videos were published on TikTok by the 3 accounts 20 minutes to 42 hours after being published on Douyin. TikTok videos are nearly identical to their Douyin counterparts except that the PRC state media logos were blurred.
• 2 of the nearly identical videos were published by Wan-Wan Generator 2 to 5 hours before being published on Douyin. Logo of the PRC state media remains visible in the TikTok videos.

0.35x amplification on TikTok

• Identical videos published by anonymous TikTok accounts are less engaging than their PRC state media Douyin counterparts. Total views of the 23 videos on TikTok is 171,927, 34.94% of the 492,055 views on Douyin.

Future Works

• Build a more robust visual analysis pipeline by incorporating facial recognition and enable detection of video crop, zoom, and rotation.
• Develop alternative analytical methods for videos without speech.
• Expand content archiving from PRC state media Douyin accounts.
• Expand content archiving from TikTok.
• Apply analytical pipeline in detecting PRC proxies on YouTube.