Reflections | TikTok CEO’s hostile questioning by US House committee recalls Romance of the Three Kingdoms encounter between envoy and warlord’s advisers
- Chew Shou Zi faced a US congressional panel so hostile he did not stand a chance. A Chinese historical novel depicts a similar face-off
- Antagonistic advisers to a warlord hurl pointed questions and barbed comments at Zhuge Liang, envoy of a rival warlord; in this case his eloquence disarms them
On March 23 TikTok’s chief executive, Chew Shou Zi, endured hours of questioning by the United States House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, whose contention was that TikTok was a tool used by the Chinese government to spy on the US and its citizens.
The atmosphere was so hostile that Chew, whose name plate the committee didn’t even bother to get right (“Mr. Shou Chew”), did not stand a chance.
A similar situation, in which a single individual faces off against an antagonistic group of adversaries armed with pointed questions and barbed comments, is brilliantly depicted in chapter 43 of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a historical novel set during the eponymous period in China’s distant past.
It was the first decade of the third century, and the once mighty, 400-year Han dynasty was in its final gasps. China was riven by warlords with imperial ambitions, among whom Cao Cao, Liu Bei and Sun Quan were the most prominent.
Cao, who held the puppet strings of the last Han emperor in the north, controlled the biggest army and territory, and was preparing for a massive military campaign to mop up all his rival warlords in the rest of China, in particular Liu and Sun, who were based in the south of the Yangtze River.