The feedback come after studies the US authorities threatened to ban the favored app until its homeowners, Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd, divested.
China has accused america of spreading disinformation and suppressing TikTok following studies Washington is looking on its Chinese language homeowners to promote their stakes within the well-liked video-sharing app.
The US has but to current proof that TikTok threatens its nationwide safety and was utilizing the excuse of knowledge safety to abuse its energy to suppress overseas corporations, overseas ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin instructed reporters on Thursday.
“The US ought to cease spreading disinformation about knowledge safety, cease suppressing the related firm, and supply an open, truthful and non-discriminatory setting for overseas companies to speculate and function within the US,” Wang stated.
“Knowledge safety points shouldn’t be used as a instrument for some nations to overstretch the idea of nationwide safety, abuse state energy, and unjustifiably suppress different nations’ enterprises.”
TikTok was dismissive of a report in The Wall Road Journal on Wednesday that stated the Committee on Overseas Funding within the US, a part of the Treasury Division, was threatening a ban on the app until its homeowners, Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd, divested.
“If defending nationwide safety is the target, divestment would not remedy the issue: a change in possession wouldn’t impose any new restrictions on knowledge flows or entry,” TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan stated.
TikTok was already answering considerations by means of “clear, US-based safety of US consumer knowledge and programs with strong third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification”, stated Shanahan.
The Journal report cited nameless “folks accustomed to the matter”. The Treasury Division and the White Home’s Nationwide Safety Council declined to remark.
Push pro-Beijing propaganda?
The transfer is essentially the most dramatic in a collection of current steps by US officers and legislators who’ve raised fears that TikTok’s American consumer knowledge could possibly be handed on to China’s authorities. TikTok has greater than 100 million US customers.
TikTok stays extraordinarily well-liked and is utilized by two-thirds of youngsters within the US. However there may be rising concern that Beijing may get hold of management of US consumer knowledge that the app obtained and push pro-Beijing narratives and propaganda on the app.
TikTok Chief Govt Shou Zi Chew will seem earlier than the US Congress subsequent week.
It isn’t clear if the Chinese language authorities would approve any divestiture and the Chinese language embassy in Washington didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
In the meantime, Britain’s Nationwide Cyber Safety Heart has been reviewing whether or not TikTok must be barred from authorities telephones, whereas the US, Canada, Belgium and the European Fee have already banned the app from the units of civil servants.
The UK authorities is predicted to make a press release on the safety of its units afterward Thursday.
