‘Abusing state power’: China lashes out at US over TikTok bans
US government bans on Chinese-owned video sharing app TikTok reveal Washington’s own insecurities and are an abuse of state power, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson has said.
China, though, has itself long blocked a large list of foreign social media platforms and messaging apps, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
The US government “has been overstretching the concept of national security and abusing state power to suppress other countries’ companies”, Mao Ning said at a daily briefing on Tuesday. “How unsure of itself can the US, the world’s top superpower, be to fear a young person’s favourite app to such a degree?”
The White House is giving all federal agencies, in guidance issued Monday, 30 days to wipe TikTok off all government devices. The White House already did not allow TikTok on its devices.
TikTok is used by two-thirds of American teenagers, but there is concern in Washington that China could use its legal and regulatory powers to obtain private user data or to try to push misinformation or narratives favouring China.
Congress and more than half of US states have so-far banned TikTok from government-issued mobile devices.
Some have also moved to apply the ban to any app or website owned by ByteDance, the private Chinese company that owns TikTok and moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020.
Washington and Beijing are at odds over myriad issues including trade, computer chips and other technology, national security and Taiwan, along with the discovery of a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the US and its shooting down earlier this month.
On Monday, Canada announced it was joining the US in banning TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices.
“I suspect that as government takes the
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