(Beijing) China assured Friday that it would “never” ask its companies to hand over data collected abroad, as the Chinese application TikTok is threatened with a total ban in the United States in the name of security national.
The short-video sharing app, popular among young people, is accused by its critics of giving Chinese authorities access to user data around the world, which TikTok disputes.
Its boss Shou Zi Chew, a Singaporean with a Harvard degree, tried hard on Thursday in the American Congress to defend its application, in the face of intractable elected officials, who for the most part condemned TikTok in advance.
For more than five hours, elected officials hardly let the former banker speak and accused the Chinese Communist Party of using TikTok for purposes of espionage via American user data and manipulation.
Beijing swept aside these accusations on Friday.
The Chinese government “has never and will not ask any company or individual to collect or hand over data from overseas in a way that violates local laws,” a spokeswoman said. of Chinese diplomacy, Mao Ning.
“The U.S. government has so far provided no evidence that TikTok poses a threat to the national security of the United States,” the spokeswoman said, slamming “unwarranted attacks” on the app .
The White House, the European Commission, the Canadian and British governments and other organizations recently banned their officials from using TikTok on their work phones.
At the center of fears is a 2017 Chinese law that requires local companies to hand over personal data that would be relevant to national security upon request from the authorities.
TikTok is owned by Chinese group ByteDance, which has a similar but separate app for China.
On Thursday, Shou Zi Chew was forced to admit that some Americans’ personal data was still subject to Chinese law, but said that would soon change.
Mr. Chew promised that by the end of the year, all information related to the 150 million American users would be managed only from servers of the Texas-based Oracle group, located in the United States.
ByteDance had acknowledged in November that employees in China could have access to European user data.
In December, he admitted that employees had used data to spy on journalists. But the group fiercely denies any Chinese government control or access to its data.
“The Chinese government does not own or control ByteDance. It’s a private company, ”his boss since 2021, Shou Zi Chew, insisted Thursday before Congress, without convincing elected officials.
“I still believe that the communist government in Beijing will always have control, and the ability to influence what you do,” said elected Democrat Frank Pallone.
The popularity of TikTok has exploded thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, beyond its original audience, teenagers. The app has over 100 million users in the United States.
It has surpassed YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook in “time spent” by American adults on each platform in recent years, and is now hot on Netflix, according to Insider Intelligence.