TikTok distances itself from China amid pressure from the US, while branching out to other markets: reports

The app, valued at US$78 billion late last year, continues to face scepticism from US lawmakers and officials

Amid mounting pressure from the US, short video app TikTok is reportedly taking steps to distance itself from China while branching out to other markets

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TikTok has been under pressure from US authorities over concerns about data privacy and security. Photo: Reuters

Published: 11:35am, 19 Nov 2019Updated: 2:31pm, 19 Nov 2019

If Chinese President Xi Jinping personally asked TikTok’s chief to take down a video or hand over user data, what would he do?

“I would turn him down,” Alex Zhu said without hesitation, according to an interview with The New York Times published Monday.

Zhu heads viral short video app TikTok, the most recent Chinese-owned target of scrutiny by US lawmakers. He co-founded US teen karaoke app Musical.ly, which was bought by TikTok owner ByteDance in a US$1 billion deal that is now reportedly the subject of a national security review by the US government.

TikTok has repeatedly defended itself over concerns about data privacy and security, saying that the company stores US user data locally with backup redundancy in Singapore.

But the app, valued at US$78 billion late last year, continues to face scepticism from US lawmakers and officials.

“TikTok claims they don’t store American user data in China,” Republican Senator Josh Hawley, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, said at a US Senate hearing earlier this month. “That’s nice, but all it takes is one knock on the door of their parent company, based in China, from a Communist Party official, for that data to be transferred to the Chinese government’s hands whenever they want it.”

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