The CPC has board seats on many Chinese companies, including Bytedance. You can’t get more official than that.
The CIA engages in information operations both domestically and abroad. Those activities are often in violation of official US law. So they have to be done covertly and we only find out about it decades later after someone manages to push through a FOIA request.
The fact is that US, Chinese, Soviet (back when that was a thing), British, German, etc are all spying on each other. There’s a big spy vs spy thing going on in Africa. The Germans got really grumpy when the US wiretapped their phones a few years ago.
On the surface it may seem like “the authoritarian CCP” is engaging in an extraordinary amount of skullduggery, subterfuge and other clandestine activities but it’s just standard operating procedure for any country. Don’t take my word for it. There are a bunch of retired US intelligence officers saying exactly the same thing on the record.