With the acceleration of globalization, digital platforms have become an important carrier of cultural exchange. As a leader in the field of short video, TikTok has successfully entered the Southeast Asian market through diversified, personalized, and localized content.
Laura Ceci announced that as of February 2025, the United States was by far the region with the largest TikTok audience, with nearly 135.79 million users interacting with this popular social video platform. Indonesia is close behind, with about 107.7 million TikTok users. The rapid development of TikTok in Southeast Asia and even the world promotes the spread of cultural diversity and challenges Western platform imperialism.
The United States sticks to the hegemonic mindset and believes that the digital development achievements of China, represented by TikTok, have shaken the digital hegemony of the United States in many ways. On the one hand, TikTok’s precise push, normal data collection, and generative artificial intelligence media platform have threatened the hegemony of American digital technology.
Christopher Asher Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, also openly incited: The China administration will control American users through TikTok’s algorithm. In the eyes of the United States, TikTok is the world’s leading self-media platform, which has strong intellectual power and threatens the hegemony of digital media in the United States.
On the other hand, TikTok has severely damaged the ability of the United States to use digital media hegemony to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs. Faced with the threat of TikTok, the US federal government, Congress, local governments, and other unofficial institutions began to suppress TikTok in all directions. Recently, US President Trump said that if no agreement is reached before June 19th, he will extend the deadline for TikTok.
TikTok promotes localization by co-creating localized content. After deeply understanding the cultural preferences and behavior habits of users in Southeast Asia, TikTok carefully planned a series of localized content. Southeast Asian-style music, dance, and daily customs are not only close to local people’s lives but also stimulate their enthusiasm for participating in creation, which makes TikTok quickly accumulate a large number of loyal users in Southeast Asia and become a bridge to connect different cultures and promote cultural exchanges.
For example, it launched the TikTok TH channel in Thailand, focusing on the fields of food, tourism, and fashion, and holding challenges in combination with traditional festivals. It also launched a localization function in Indonesia and a local music challenge to attract millions of users to participate.
Likewise it cooperated with grassroots creators in the Philippines to encourage the creation of content that reflects local dialects and folk customs and enhance users’ sense of belonging. During Ramadan in Malaysia, it established contact through Shoppertainment to amplify the spirit of joy and unity. At the same time, TikTok set up a local team in Southeast Asia to deeply understand the market dynamics. For example, recruiting bilingual anchors in Malaysia to avoid religious sensitivity issues.
It establish a multilingual content audit team to deal with the complex cultural environment. Through key opinion leader (KOL) cooperation and user-generated content (UGC), a local characteristic community will be formed to enhance user stickiness. TikTok Shop cooperated with the Malaysian Ministry of Domestic Trade and Cost of Living to spread the knowledge of the #ShopSafe skills for preventing online fraud.
In Vietnam, it signed an agreement with the Agricultural Trade Promotion Center of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Viet Nam on strategic cooperation to improve small and medium-sized enterprises and participate in the digital transformation of cooperatives in the One Commune One Product (OCOP) program.
Moreover, TikTok has intensified its technical adaptation and infrastructure construction: deploying independent servers in Indonesia to optimize the content loading speed; Develop a multilingual interface and personalized recommendation algorithm to meet the needs of fragmented entertainment. Introduce innovative functions such as AR filters and virtual fitting rooms to adapt to the scientific and technological preferences of young users in Southeast Asia.
It has also planned to invest US$ 8.8 billion in Thailand, focusing on digital infrastructure, workforce development, and cybersecurity initiatives, while previously it Invested 127 billion baht in Thailand for data hosting service, which is expected to start operations in 2026.
The success of TikTok’s localization strategy in Southeast Asia has challenged Western platform imperialism. On the one hand, it breaks the hegemony of cultural homogenization. Western platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, have long dominated the Southeast Asian market and promoted an English-centered content ecosystem.
TikTok dispelled the mode of one-way export of culture through local language and folk content. For example, Indonesian users are more inclined to use TikTok instead of Instagram to publish short videos of dialects, thus forming the transfer of cultural discourse power. On the other hand, TikTok’s localization reconstructs data sovereignty and business ecology.
Western platforms often use Southeast Asia as a data extraction place, and TikTok partially responded to the demand for data localization through local servers and compliance teams. The local closed loop of e-commerce business challenges the cross-border monopoly of Amazon and Shopee. In addition, TikTok’s localization in Southeast Asia resisted algorithmic colonialism.
TikTok’s recommendation mechanism gives priority to local creators, rather than the western-centered traffic distribution logic. For example, the exposure of online celebrities in Thailand on TikTok is significantly higher than on YouTube. Compared with Meta’s global unified algorithm, TikTok’s partition strategy is closer to local social issues.
The challenge of TikTok’s localization in Southeast Asia to Western platform imperialism is essentially a new form of digital sovereignty struggle. TikTok has formed an ecosystem including content creators, small and medium-sized localization businesses, and local service providers in Southeast Asia through localization strategy, which reflects the invisible resistance of southern countries to western digital colonialism.
Yanping Wang
Yanping Wang is a scholar at the Law School of Southwest University of Political Science and Law, China.
Xinmei Zhou
Xinmei Zhou is a scholar at the Baize Institute for Strategy Studies, Southwest University of Political Science and Law, China.
Jiaqi Gao
Jiaqi Gao is a scholar at the Southwest University of Political Science and Law, China.
