As Chinese company TikTok faces mounting pressure and calls to ban the app in the United States, Speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy announced on Sunday that lawmakers will push forward a bill to address national security concerns regarding TikTok, saying the Chinese government is looking into the data application users. .
McCarthy, who belongs to the Republican Party, tweeted: “It is very disturbing that the CEO of TikTok is unable to tell the truth and admit what we already know is true, which is that China has the right to access TikTok user data. “.
It’s very worrying that the CEO of TikTok can’t be honest and admit what we already know to be true – China has access to TikTok user data.
The House of Representatives will push legislation to protect Americans from the technological tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party.
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) March 26, 2023
long interrogation
Notably, TikTok CEO Xu Zi Zhu faced a lengthy question from US lawmakers on Thursday about the video-sharing app’s alleged links to China and the danger it poses to teens.
Zhu said during the meeting that “ByteDance (which owns the app) is not affiliated with or controlled by the Chinese government, but is a private company,” adding that “60% of the company is owned by international investment organizations. owned by its founder, and 20% owned by employees around the world,” according to AFP.
“clear transparent rules”
He also explained: “We believe that clear and transparent rules are needed that apply to all technology companies – ownership is not the basis for solving these problems.”
But he indicated that some U.S. data is still available to the company’s employees in China, saying, “Today, there is still some data that we need to remove.”
There are growing calls in the United States to ban TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, or pass a bipartisan bill giving President Joe Biden the administrative legal authority to request a ban. The app was recently banned from being downloaded on devices owned by the US government.
