TikTok CEO thrashed in Congress as US ban looms
Chinese-owned video sharing app has 150 million American users
Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok, which is owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance, was bullied in the US House of Representatives for nearly five hours on Thursday as lawmakers accused TikTok of spying on Americans and voiced suspicions about the Chinese government’s influence.
“Your platform should be banned,” Energy and Commerce Committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers said at the start of Thursday’s hearing. “TikTok is a weapon by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on you, manipulate what you see and exploit for future generations.”
Biden administration officials conducting a national security review of TikTok’s Chinese ownership told the company last week it would have to separate from Beijing-based ByteDance or face a possible ban.
Chew, who is Singaporean, tried to explain to lawmakers the steps TikTok is taking to separate and store American user data on servers operated by Oracle and located in the US.
“Our approach has never been to dismiss or trivialize any of these concerns. We have addressed them with real action,” said Chew, who brought top US TikTok executives and influencers with him to the hearing.
Part of a wider battle
The battle over TikTok and ByteDance adds to a growing set of contentious issues between Washington and Beijing. There is bipartisan concern in Congress about Beijing’s potential influence on the US public through the app. Legislation has been introduced in the Senate with White House backing that would give President Biden authority to order TikTok’s sale.
The anger directed at Chew and TikTok is also a reflection of the rising diplomatic, military, and economic tensions between China and the US and the prospect the two nations may be headed for war.
TikTok’s data plan, called ‘Project Texas’, involves storing user info under the control of an American-staffed, US-based subsidiary and deleting files from servers in Singapore and Virginia that can be accessed by people in China, Chew said.
“I don’t buy it,” Representative Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on Energy and Commerce, said, rejecting Chew’s claims. Throughout the hearing, lawmakers expressed hostility and skepticism toward Chew and TikTok.
In Beijing, a Commerce Ministry spokesperson said at a news conference that China would “strongly oppose” a forced sale of TikTok in the US. A sale would “seriously undermine the confidence of investors from various countries, including China, to invest in the United States,” Shu Jueting said.
China already bans most American social media apps.
TikTok spokeswoman Brooke Oberwetter said in a statement lawmakers had ignored solutions that TikTok was offering to secure US user data and protect young people from harmful content on the site.
Pentagon chiefs seek $9 bln to counter China
US forces must prepare for a confrontation with China in the coming years by investing in modern weapons and building stronger alliances in the Indo-Pacific, top Pentagon officials told Congress on Thursday.
“The People’s Republic of China remains our No 1 long-term geostrategic security challenge,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told House lawmakers.
“China’s actions are moving it down the path toward confrontation and potential conflict with its neighbors—and possibly with the United States. But again, I say, war with China is neither inevitable nor imminent.”
The Biden administration is asking Congress for $842 billion for the Defense Department in fiscal year 2024, including $9.1 billion for the Pacific Defense Initiative which aims to counter a rising China.
“Their military has advanced from a peasant-based infantry Army in 1979, to a world-class military that is a near-peer of the United States,” Milley said. “We don’t want a great power war with China. We want to prevent that, and the way to prevent it is a strong, powerful military with a demonstrated will to use it, if necessary.”
Hearing on Uyghur genocide
A special committee on China of the House of Representatives held a hearing on Thursday to receive testimony on China’s genocide against its largely Muslim Uyghur population in the northwestern province of Xinjiang.
Two women who had been imprisoned in Chinese forced-labor camps described torture and rape by Chinese guards, according to a report in The Hill newspaper.
Male Uyghur detainees “were called by numbers for interrogations. And then you would hear horrible screaming sounds from torture,” Qelbinur Sidik, an ethnic Uzbek, told lawmakers.
Thousands of female Uyghurs were held in the camp. Their heads were shaved and they wore gray uniforms. Guards gang raped and tortured the women with electric shocks, Sidik said.
Gulbahar Haitiwaji, a Uyghur woman who spent more than two years in two reeducation camps and police stations, recalled “11 hours of brainwashing lessons on a daily basis.” At one point she was chained to her bed for 20 days.
Chinese officials warned Haitiwaji she should not talk about what she had witnessed in the camp. “If I do, they will retaliate against my family back home,” she said.
The US State Department released an annual report on March 20, renewing its findings that China has engaged in genocide against the Uyghurs in Zinjiang.
More than one million people have been imprisoned in forced labor and reeducation camps, the report says. Uyghur women have been subjected to forced sterilization, coerced abortions, and birth control as well as rape and other forms of violence, the report says.
Europe reacts to Xi’s visit to Moscow
Estonia’s Secretary of Defense Kusti Salm said China’s peace proposal to end the war in Ukraine was “extremely unfair” and did not respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Beijing had issued a 12-point peace plan in February leading up to President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow earlier this week.
“Whenever we measure … the feasibility of any peace deal, it needs to be measured against the same principles. Are we outrooting the aggression as a tool?” Salm told CNBC’s ‘Squawk Box Asia’ on Friday.
“Are we honoring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of independent nations?”
Those are “key ingredients and elements missing” from China’s peace proposal, he said.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told EU leaders behind closed doors on Thursday that Europe should not seek to isolate China over its partnership with Russia and worsening relations with the West amid the Ukraine war. China is interested in engaging with Europe but could go in its own direction if isolated, Guterres said, according to an EU official familiar with the discussions who spoke to the South China Morning Post.