Tik Tok, China on US "social war": political and xenophobic persecution

BEIJING - China calls on the US to stop "unreasonably" suppressing Chinese companies by assuring that it "has never asked and will never ask" any company or individual to collect data and information in other states by means that violate local laws, adding that a possible US ban on TikTok would be "a political and xenophobic persecution". A ban on TikTok would be "xenophobic political persecution". Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said in response to a question about TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew's US congressional hearing on data security issues.

"The US government has exaggerated the concept of national security and abused state power to repress companies from other countries," Mao Ning said last March 1, regarding the ban of the app on government devices by Washington, "How insecure can the United States, the world's number one superpower, be to be so fearful of a young person's favorite app?"

The White House had already banned the use of the social network on government devices for some time. Subsequently, on February 28, its removal was requested, complete with a guide to do it safely and a 30-day deadline, later extended, to comply with the directive. The Canadian government is also on the same line. "I suspect that when the government takes the significant step of telling all federal employees they can no longer use TikTok on their work phones, many Canadians, from businesses to individuals, will reflect on their data security and perhaps make choices," Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters after the announcement.

And there is no shortage of more radical positions within the US Congress calling for the ban to be extended to any app or website owned by ByteDance, the private Chinese company that owns TikTok. It should not be forgotten that China has also moved its pawns in this "social battle", going so far as to ban the use of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for some time.