Chinese state media outlets have spoken out against a new bill passed by the US House of Representatives that would force a divestment of TikTok, while the app’s parent company ByteDance and the Chinese government have remained silent.
The latest developments have increased the odds of a forced sale of TikTok, even though the company has told US employees it will fight the law in court.
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TikTok “will move to the courts for a legal challenge” when the bill is signed, said Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of policy in the Americas, in an internal memo on Saturday seen by the South China Morning Post.
The Chinese response has been relatively measured. ByteDance did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Monday.
The Post reported earlier that Beijing-based ByteDance decided to delegate the political lobbying and legal battle to the TikTok team under its Singaporean CEO Chew Shou Zi.
In a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, TikTok reiterated its opposition to the House vote, criticising lawmakers for “using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance” to push forward what would effectively be a ban that would “trample the free speech rights” of its 170 million American users and 7 million businesses.
The Chinese government has not commented on the latest bill, but Chinese state media have voiced opposition.
In an article on Sunday night, CGTN, the English-language channel of state-run CCTV, said the request for ByteDance to divest TikTok over security concerns was a sign of the US falling into “Sinophobia”.
Another CGTN opinion piece, penned by special commentator David Gosset, the founder of the China-Europe-America Global Initiative, argued that the bill’s passage in the House of Representatives “exposes weaknesses and a lack of confidence” about China in Washington, and questioned if US lawmakers will go after other Chinese-backed ventures like fashion retailer Shein.
“It becomes apparent that whenever a non-American entity poses a threat to US dominance in a particular sector, the government tends to intervene, politicise the issue, and rewrite the rules of engagement,” Gosset wrote.
China Daily reported that the bill is likely to be signed into law, and would deal a heavy blow to Sino-US relations. Chen Weihua, China Daily’s EU bureau chief, endorsed Elon Musk’s comment on X, where the Tesla chief executive accused the bill of “being contrary to freedom of speech and expression”. Chen said that Musk “speaks truth to power”, adding that “not many would dare to say that in McCarthyist America today”, referring to the political repression of alleged communists in the US in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Hu Xijin, former chief editor of Global Times, a nationalist tabloid affiliated with the People’s Daily newspaper, wrote that the passage of the TikTok bill was not all bad. The new bill, which extended the deadline until after the US election, “will ease the controversy surrounding TikTok during the election”, Hu noted.
