Last year’s Romanian presidential election saw the rise of Calin Georgescu, an “independent” candidate who made it into the second round. His unexpected advance to the runoff election, where he was set to face pro-EU and pro-NATO Elena Lasconi, raised concerns among observers due to Georgescu’s favorable stance toward Russia.
As someone who was expected to receive minimal support in the first round, Georgescu ran on a political platform boosted by an enormous number of messages on social media, notably on TikTok, supporting his bid for the presidency.
Romanian officials said TikTok failed to label posts supporting Georgescu as “politically motivated.” That laid the foundation for the populist candidate’s rise. On the other hand, his rivals’ contents were properly labeled as “politically oriented.”
For the first time in the country’s democratic history, the Romanian Constitutional Court decided to annul the runoff election when it was due to take place in about two days.
The decision came after Romanian President Klaus Iohannis declassified several intelligence documents about Georgescu’s campaign investigation. It indicated that a large part of pro-Georgescu TikTok accounts’ contents were coordinated through a Telegram channel.
The investigation also revealed that many Romanian influencers have allegedly been paid to support Georgescu’s bid. The pro-Russia candidate denied having any campaign expenses, despite Romanian law requiring that electoral campaign expenditures be declared.
One of those influencers, Bogdan Peschir, is under investigation for allegedly donating US$1 million to an account promoting Georgescu.
Moreover, one of the intelligence files revealed what the Romanian Supreme Council of National Defense denounced as the “massive exposure” of Georgescu “based on preferential treatment by TikTok.”
In essence, the social media platform allegedly contravened its own policies on elections, particularly in regards to the prohibition of “paid promotions” and “political advertising” to “avoid interfering with voters.”
That is the reason Romanian officials and the EU Commission asked TikTok to clarify which measures it was adopting to “avoid the manipulation of information” and “mitigate the risks related to elections and pluralism of media.”
The Romanian case clearly exemplifies what most European politicians and citizens are failing to understand: TikTok’s outsized power to amplify specific voices, at the expense of others, poses a grave threat to democracy.
Although the social media platform defends itself by stating that it is “not owned or controlled by Beijing, since it is a private company,” the fact that it is an app made by Chinese in China should not be overlooked.
TikTok is extremely vulnerable to Chinese Communist Party demands, as Beijing is known for using private companies serve its goals. Those can be achieved through capturing data, surveilling users, and spreading false and misleading claims with the potential to undermine democracy and national security.
With regard to goals and interests, the past two years further demonstrated the convergence between China and Russia in the geopolitical arena, especially in the context of Beijing providing Moscow with dual-use components which are identified by the US and the EU as “high priority” items necessary for Russia’s war machine.
As China and Russia further intensify their common agenda aimed at destabilizing Western societies through “interference activities,” the EU should engage with Taiwan to tackle Russia’s hybrid threat tactics by learning from its experience in dealing with China’s “digital warfare.”
The two nations’ ambition to reorganize the global order through coordinated actions, which include cybersecurity threats, information manipulation and interference activities, must be met with a firmer stance by European countries.
Romania’s case could prove beneficial in understanding what steps authoritarian countries plan to take.
As researchers Ejazul Haq Ateed and Merve Suna Ozel Ozcan said in their paper titled A New Face of China: Sharp Power Strategy and its Global Effects, China and Russia aim to expand global influence by “distracting and manipulating information, rectifying its image and undermining adversaries.”
As TikTok could be used for influence operations, EU countries must tackle the challenges it poses by joining forces with like-minded countries such as the US, Taiwan, Canada or Australia in providing a renewed framework to prevent risks to their democratic existence.
It would imply setting up policies aimed at avoiding situations such as the presidential elections in Romania, since “prevention is better than the cure.”
Michele Maresca is an analyst at the online international law journal Il Caffe Geopolitico and the think tank Geopol 21.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not