US 'TikTok Ban Bill' Vote... China Says "Harassment Without Evidence of Security Threat"

Vote Scheduled in US House on 13th
"Harassment After Losing Fair Competition"

The Chinese government strongly criticized the so-called 'TikTok Ban Act,' a bill in the U.S. Congress that would force ByteDance to sell the social networking service (SNS) TikTok, calling it 'harassment.'

Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a regular briefing on the 13th, "In recent years, the U.S. has not found any evidence that TikTok threatens U.S. national security, yet it has never stopped suppressing TikTok," adding, "(The U.S.) chose harassment because it could not win in fair competition."

[Image source=Getty Images Yonhap News]

Spokesperson Wang said, "The normal business activities of the company have been disrupted, international investors' confidence in the investment environment has been damaged, and the normal international economic and trade order has been destroyed," adding, "In the end, the U.S. will only harm itself." However, he did not specifically answer the question of what role the Chinese government would play if the U.S. legislature orders the sale of TikTok.

The U.S. House of Representatives will hold a vote on the TikTok Ban Act on the 13th (local time), which forces ByteDance to sell TikTok. Earlier, on the 7th, the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously passed a bill that forces ByteDance to sell TikTok and bans TikTok downloads in the U.S. if the sale is not carried out.

This bill, which has bipartisan support from both Democrats and Republicans, has been designated as a fast-track (expedited) bill. If more than two-thirds of the total members vote in favor in this vote, it will pass the House and move on to the Senate.

According to the bill, ByteDance must sell TikTok within 165 days after the bill takes effect. Failure to comply will make the sale of TikTok on U.S. app stores illegal.

The number of TikTok users in the U.S. is about 170 million. It is popular worldwide, especially among young people, through short-form video content. However, the U.S. government and political circles have raised concerns that user information of TikTok, owned by a Chinese company, could flow to the Chinese Communist Party regime. Accordingly, the White House issued a ban on TikTok use across all federal government agencies last year.

TikTok has long argued that it does not share user information with the Chinese government and protests that this bill is effectively a measure to ban TikTok in the U.S.