A public relations leg of the Chinese government tried to convince TikTok to let it have a secret account to promote national propaganda, according to internal messages obtained by Bloomberg. A message from April 2020 to government relations officer Elizabeth Kanter flagged a “Chinese government entity that’s interested in joining TikTok but would not want to be openly seen as a government account as the main purpose is for promoting content that showcase the best side of China.” This caused execs to have an internal discussion about “sensitive” requests, and the request was ultimately denied. “We declined to offer support for this request, as we believed the creation of such an account would violate our Community Guidelines,” a TikTok spokesperson told Bloomberg.