Possible TikTok ban: US parliament votes on controversial legislation

A new attempt is underway in the US to force an ownership transfer of the short video app TikTok. The House of Representatives in Washington will vote on Wednesday on a bill that could lead to the banning of TikTok from US app stores if the service remains owned by Bytedance.

In the US, this is seen by all parties as a Chinese company that must bow to the will of the Chinese Communist Party. According to a media report, Bytedance is determined to exhaust all legal remedies against a threatened US ban before considering a sale.

A separation from TikTok is seen as the last option, the financial service Bloomberg wrote on Tuesday, citing informed people. After the House of Representatives, the draft must still be approved by the Senate as a lower chamber and signed by President Joe Biden.

Political pressure is increasing

Biden has already made it clear that he supports the plan. His national security adviser Jake Sullivan emphasized on Tuesday that it was not a ‘TikTok ban’ but a transfer of ownership. “Do we want TikTok as a platform to be owned by an American company – or by China?” he asked at a press conference at the White House.

“Do we want data from TikTok – data from children and adults – to stay here in America or go to China?” These are fundamental questions on which Biden has a clear position.

In the US – as in Europe – there are concerns that the app could be used to collect information about users by Chinese authorities or for political influence. Governments of several countries and the European Commission have banned the use of TikTok on mobile phones at work.

Accusations from China

China’s Foreign Ministry accused the US on Wednesday of bullying TikTok. This behavior undermines the international economic and trade order and will ultimately affect the US, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in Beijing. Despite never finding evidence of a threat to national security, Washington has never stopped banning TikTok, he continued.

TikTok always dismisses concerns and emphasizes that it does not see itself as a subsidiary of a Chinese company. Bytedance is 60 percent owned by Western investors. The company’s headquarters are in the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean. Critics counter that the Chinese founders, with a 20 percent stake, retained control thanks to higher voting rights and that Bytedance has a major headquarters in Beijing.

TikTok claims to have 170 million users in the US. During his term as US president, Donald Trump tried to force a sale of TikTok’s US operations to US investors, under threat of a ban.

But the plan failed mainly because US courts suspected that the plans for a TikTok ban would violate the freedom of expression enshrined in the US Constitution. A current law in the state of Montana that would ban TikTok from app stores there has also been suspended.

Trump is against Facebook

Trump has now backed away from calls for a ban. TikTok is an important counterbalance to Facebook, which he sees as an ‘enemy of the people’, Trump recently said on business channel CNBC. Given his control over Republicans, the ex-president’s position also raises the question of whether the bill will be passed by the House of Representatives, where they have a slim majority.

Before Biden took a clear position, Democrats were sharply divided when it came to TikTok: on the one hand, the president wants to take a tough position on China, and on the other, the app is popular among young users, whose voices he must include be re-elected in November.

The Wall Street Journal wrote on Tuesday that TikTok management was blindsided by the bill. The service has been trying to gain trust in the US for years with the plan to store information from American users exclusively in the country and have data movements monitored by an American partner. But during hearings in the US Congress, TikTok boss Shou Chew was still met with strong suspicion.

(rbu/sda/awp/dpa)