TikTok CEO grilled by hostile US politicians over China links
Hearing comes as US politicians from both sides are pushing for a complete ban of the social media app
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was questioned by US politicians for more than five hours over the social media app's alleged links to the Chinese government and protections for young users.
TikTok is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, although Tiktok is based in Singapore and the US and says it has no ties to China. Many in the US fear the Chinese government could spy on or manipulate US citizens through the app.
"Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country," Shou said, before facing a hostile grilling from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers in a congressional committee hearing.
The hugely popular social media app, used by an estimated 150 million Americans, certainly had links to China in the past, in that it is impossible to run a large-scale enterprise in that country without some political connections. However, in the past couple of years it has moved to diversify its infrastructure, including storing US citizens' data on that country's home soil through a $2 billion deal with Oracle called Project Texas, set to be completed this year.
These measures, Chew said, mean that TikTok is no longer subject to any demands for access to data by the Chinese government. However, Chew conceded that for now some Chinese employees could have access to some US citizen's data.
In response to a question by Democrat Tony Cárdenas whether TikTok is Chinese, Shou responded that the app is not available in mainland China and that its headquarters are Singapore and LA. The company has 7,000 US employees, he noted.
The lawmakers also singled out TikTok as a danger to children, something that Chew said was an "industry-wide challenge" and something the company "takes very seriously."
The US government says it wants ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban, a demand that would be unprecedented and to which China has said it is "firmly opposed."
The evidence linking TikTok to the Chinese Communist Party is rather thin, and any ban would doubtless be met by legal challenges on free speech grounds. TikTok's use of users data is not very different to Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms.
"American social companies don't have a good track record with data privacy and user security," Chew said, mentioning the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
However, the company finds itself in the midst of growing antipathy between China and the US, and while many of the questions posed by the US lawmakers were performative and obviously intended for home consumption, there is no escaping that political reality that banning TikTok outright would find support on both sides of the political divide.
The US banned TikTok from federal government-issued devices last year due to national security concerns. That move was followed by the EU, New Zealand and last week by the UK.
After the hearing, TikTok released a statement: "Shou came prepared to answer questions from Congress, but, unfortunately, the day was dominated by political grandstanding that failed to acknowledge the real solutions already under way through Project Texas or productively address industry-wide issues of youth safety."