From blocks to blue ticks: How China became big business for Twitter

SINGAPORE/ BEIJING: Even as China bars 1.4 billion citizens from Twitter, its local authorities are splurging on global advertising on the site, helping make the country the platform’s fastest-growing overseas ad market and one of its largest non-US revenue sources.
A Reuters review of available government tenders, budget documents and promoted tweets from 2020 to 2022 shows local authorities and Chinese Communist Party propaganda offices for cities, provinces and even districts have flocked to Twitter to buy ads.
The promotions, often outsourced by local governments to state media, pitched local attractions, as well as cultural and economic achievements, to an international audience, and were permitted under an exemption to Twitter’s ban on state-media advertising.
The review shows for the first time just how important China has become for Twitter, under pressure from investors to meet growth targets as its US business stalls. Sources told Reuters operations in China became a source of internal clashes between teams keen to maximise the sales opportunity and others concerned at the optics of doing business with state-affiliated entities at a time of growing tension between Beijing and Washington.
Twitter’s dealings in China may come to the fore on Tuesday when the US Senate judiciary committee holds a hearing on a whistleblower complaint filed by Twitter’s former security chief Peiter Zatko.
The complaint alleges “Twitter executives knew that accepting Chinese money risked endangering users in China,” and that “Zatko was told that Twitter was too dependent upon the revenue stream to do anything other than attempt to increase it”. Twitter denies the accusations. A spokesperson said the company has never hidden the fact that it does business with Chinese commercial entities.
The company banned political and state-media advertising in 2019, though an August blog announcement that year allowed a carveout for ads “from (state-media) accounts solely dedicated to entertainment, sports and travel content”. In March this year, though, that exemption was rescinded, effectively banning state-media firms from advertising on Twitter altogether.
Twitter’s China region has seen an 800-fold improvement in revenue since 2014, the fastest-growing globally, according to the now-deleted LinkedIn bio of Twitter Greater China managing director Alan Lan.
As the business grew, Chinese local government accounts ramped up their demands on the company, asking for blue-tick verifications, or for help with negative activity targeting their accounts, sources said.
The buying of ads on Twitter has come as Chinese police have increased arrests of citizens who have found ways to use the platform to criticise authorities, according to Chinese news coverage of court cases.