I just tried it using a VM and a VPN and I cannot reproduce your claim. Searching for "covid" and "corona", for example, literally shows me the current videos about China's crackdown on recent protests from Vice, FlashNews Australia and Sky News (as well as citizen videos from those events) as the top result. Nothing that would paint China in a positive light in any way.
I tried in… October 2021 just after I moved to Taiwan. Friend sent me some video of food fuckup (someone cooking turkey in oil annd setting everything on fire) and so I signed up. Scrolling through i had random videos of one (Chinese) person saying covid originated at fort detrick and blaming China was a US coverup. Another video (Chinese) person saying it originated in deer in the US. Another (Chinese) person saying it started in the US in august 2019 and they took it to China to try kill the Chinese.
I deleted tiktok about an hour after signing up so obviously my claim isn’t based on any significant data. And I also don’t claim to say this is prevalent.
But I never searched anything. I’m not from the US. And while on YouTube I do watch some content in relation to what’s happening in the US, China, Ukraine, Iran. It’s not a playlist. 98% of what I watch is movie trailers and tech videos.
Even on Instagram and Facebook 99% of what I watch is food related.
So I don’t expect my experience to be taken as absolute fact that China is spreading a propaganda through tiktok. But it’s my experience and based on the propaganda on YouTube (videos of YouTubers being escorted around the exact same areas in Xinjiang as “proof” there’s no genocide) I think it’s likely that there is some propaganda to paint the US in bad light.
