It is regrettable that, lately, the world’s market economy has increasingly faced interference from governmental forces. Leading the way, the United States has ordered that TikTok, a popular Chinese website and app similar to YouTube, be censored on the grounds of its potential threat to national security . If anything, national security has always been invoked by the US government as the sword of Damocles against anything or anyone (“ Trump ban could cut TikTok off from US app stores and advertisers ”, August 12). Take Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, for example. Accusations of threats to user privacy are merely a means to an end, namely, stifling the growth of a Chinese enterprise garnering success worldwide. The recent move by the Trump administration to make it unlawful for any US citizen or enterprise to do business with TikTok shows just how prone to abuse the concept of national security is. If anything, it is hard to believe that a social media site has the power to threaten the integrity of a superpower when its contents are nothing more than videos produced by the very citizens of that superpower itself. Is an iPhone in China any good if Trump bans WeChat? However, the US government adopted a diametrically different stance when the founder of Apple Daily , a popular local rightist newspaper, was investigated by the Hong Kong government for potentially unlawful activities, under the new national security law which took effect late on June 30. If the freedom of press and speech were truly sacrosanct, the US government would have acknowledged the right of its citizens to self-expression and to listen to the expressions of others, at home and abroad, through TikTok. That the government so readily and swiftly condemned Hong Kong’s national security law and the investigations carried out under it, cannot but lead one to think that double standards are at play. If an American media enterprise invited sanctions from foreign countries against the US, and encouraged unlawful protests against the state, would the national security sword of Damocles not have been invoked by the Trump administration to outlaw it? At the very least, investigations would have to be carried out. Such is the hypocrisy of the US under Donald Trump’s leadership: unfettered national security for itself, and itself only. Andy Jou, North Point