Expert warns of 'chilling reality' TikTok threat poses: 'China's greatest asymmetric advantage'

China’s "infiltration" of civil discourse in the United States poses an "immediate" threat to Democracy and is one of the "greatest threats we face today" in terms of national security, according to an expert on China.

"TikTok is not just a technological concern, it is not just a social media problem, TikTok is today China's greatest asymmetric advantage against America," Michael Sobolik, author of the new book "Countering China’s Great Game: A Strategy for American Dominance," told Fox News Digital.

"It represents the most immediate threat to American democracy that the Chinese Communist Party poses."

China’s role in "infiltrating our civil discourse" through TikTok represents one of the "most important problem sets in US-China relations," Sobolik explained, because "you have about half of America on one app that the Chinese Communist Party controls, and they can manipulate public opinion and spread propaganda."

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"It’s a huge problem."

Sobolik, a Senior Fellow in Indo-Pacific Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, told Fox News Digital that 170 million Americans are on the social media platform with 150 million of them on the site for at least an hour a day. A large chunk of those users, Sobolik said, rely on the platform for news, which the Chinese government is using to its advantage.

"The Chinese Communist Party controls TikTok, because TikTok's parent company ByteDance is domiciled inside of China," Sobolik said. "As such, they must comply with any requests that they receive from Beijing to turn over U.S. user data, to censor content, or to boost content. They have no recourse of saying no to the CCP. There have already