A “Real Housewives” star, a Paralympian, and a top TikTok celebrity are among the social media influencers that the Chinese regime financed to help boost the image of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games in the minds of millions in the United States and elsewhere, Justice Department records show.
The social media posts promoting Beijing’s narrative on the Games came from roughly a dozen popular social media accounts on Instagram, YouTube, live-streaming app Twitch, and video-sharing platform TikTok, reaching millions of fans who follow the influencers, who typically share about food, travel, social issues, sports, and beauty products.
Hashtags in the caption, such as #Beijing2022 and #partner, were often the only sign indicating these posts as sponsored ads, and the posts gave no hint that the source of funds came from the Chinese state.
Three of the more than two dozen posts came from Crystal Minkoff, a Californian of Chinese heritage and cast member of “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.” In one, she shared a photo of her previous trip to Beijing and said the city “has a very special place in our family’s hearts.”
“We have hosted many friends at our home there and couldn’t be more excited to be watching the @Beijing2022 Winter Olympics!” she wrote in a Feb. 15 Instagram post.
Posing as an anchor in another video, she announced a mock-up “at home Olympics” of musical chairs with her children to “bring the fun at home.”
The day before the Beijing Paralympics ended, U.S. Paralympic swimmer Jessica Long posted a video on Instagram saying it was “incredible how the city of Beijing was able to put together such magical games.”
It brought back “ALL the wonderful memories from that time I competed there,” she wrote in text accompanying the post, urging her fans to not miss out on the “last few events and a beautiful closing ceremony.”
In a video with the text “We know I woulda taken home gold if I was there. Go Team USA!,” Anna Sitar, who has 11.6 million followers on TikTok, shows a backyard party dubbed “Anna’s Winter Olympics,” featuring games such as ring tossing and eating a donut hung from a string. Later in the video, Sitar squats down watching a group of others play a ball toss game using ping pong balls, and turns to a girl next to her to share a “fun fact” about how Beijing is the world’s first city to host both the Summer and Winter Olympics.
“No way,” the other girl said.
However, perhaps the most overt promotion comes from Ryan Dubs, a self-described “brand king” who sells skincare products through his TikTok videos, all of which had the packaging sourced from China, he admitted in one video.
He told his more than 500,000 followers that it would be “impossible to have our crazy, beautiful packaging made anywhere else in the world.”
“They are just so high-tech and forward-thinking, they have machines that literally haven’t been invented yet in America,” Dubs said. “Chinese manufacturers are honestly like luxury fashion houses because they create what the fashion trends are and then all the American brands trickle down with the same designs a year later.”
Three weeks later in mid-March, he posted a three-minute interview with New York’s Chinese consul general, Huang Ping, at the Chinese consulate. The video shows Dubs eagerly endorsing the consul’s criticisms of U.S. tariffs on China and encouraging businesses to enter the Chinese market, nodding every now and then to concur with Huang’s points. The topic of the Beijing Olympic Games also came up, with Dubs claiming the Games “really helped define China in 2022.”
“This is one of the coolest interviews I’ve ever been able to do,” an ebullient Dubs said at the end of the video.
Most of the posts reviewed by The Epoch Times explicitly disclosed its links with the Chinese consulate. Only three of the posts indicated that it was a paid partnership, and one used the “#partner” tag to show it was sponsored. TikTok and Instagram both ask influencers to label such content as a paid partnership with the company. Instagram also requires users to tag their sponsors.
The Justice Department disclosure comes less than a week after Chinese state broadcaster CCTV’s Washington news bureau, Media Links, revealed in a filing that it spent nearly $54,000 on advertising and promotion over the past six months. Part of this expenditure included disseminating a video ad promoting CCTV’s annual new year gala. On the Jan. 10 hockey night at Capital One Arena in Washington, it rented a billboard displaying logos of the Chinese New Year and gave away stuffed pandas.
Representatives for TikTok, Instagram, Minkoff, Long, Sitar, and Dubs didn’t respond to requests for comment by press time.
