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TikTok ban: Senator Marco Rubio calls for block in US after Chinese government buys stake
- The Biden administration in June withdrew a series of Trump-era executive orders that sought to ban new downloads of WeChat and TikTok
- Corporate records show that the Chinese government took a stake and a board seat in a ByteDance entity this year
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Republican Senator Marco Rubio urged President Joe Biden on Tuesday to block short-form video app TikTok in the United States after China took an ownership stake in a key subsidiary of ByteDance, the Beijing-based parent company of TikTok.
The Biden administration in June withdrew a series of Trump-era executive orders that sought to ban new downloads of WeChat and TikTok.
“Beijing’s aggressiveness makes clear that the regime sees TikTok as an extension of the party-state, and the US needs to treat it that way,” Rubio said in a statement. “We must also establish a framework of standards that must be met before a high-risk, foreign-based app is allowed to operate on American telecommunications networks and devices.”
The Commerce Department is conducting a Biden-ordered review of security concerns posed by those apps and others. It did not respond to a request for comment.
Corporate records show that the Chinese government took a stake and a board seat in a ByteDance entity this year – a move that raises questions over how much influence Beijing is planning to wield in a tech sector reeling under an onslaught of regulatory action.
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