China on Friday denied pressuring companies to collect information abroad on behalf of the government, rebuffing claims made by American lawmakers about the viral video app TikTok, which is at the centre of an escalating dispute between Washington and Beijing over politics, technology and economics.
At a news conference, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, said China “has never and will not” ask companies or individuals to collect data stored in foreign countries in a way that violates those countries’ laws.
The denial came a day after a heated, five-hour congressional hearing in which US lawmakers grilled TikTok’s chief executive, Shou Chew, over the app’s ties to its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, as well as its possible use as a surveillance tool by the Chinese government.
China’s reaction to the hearing highlighted how TikTok, which has roughly 150 million users in the US, has become a flashpoint in the geopolitical tussle between the world’s two largest economies.
Hours before Chew’s hearing on Thursday, China’s ministry of commerce said it would oppose a forced sale of the app, a rebuke to the Biden administration, which recently called for the app’s Chinese owners to sell it or face a possible ban in the US.
This month, the White House endorsed a bipartisan Senate bill that would give the commerce department the power to ban any app that endangered Americans’ security, putting potential restrictions on TikTok on a more solid legal footing.
US lawmakers and regulators fear that Beijing could compel TikTok to hand over sensitive data about US users or tweak its recommendation algorithm to serve propaganda.
They point to expansive Chinese laws that require citizens and private companies to cooperate with authorities’ public security investigations and intelligence work.
At Thursday’s hearings, lawmakers repeatedly pressed Chew on ByteDance’s admission that employees had obtained the data of US users.
Tensions between the superpowers intensified after the discovery of a Chinese surveillance balloon over US.
New York Times News Service
