TikTok ban: US should be building bridges, not walls, in data governance

The Trump administration, which has been blacklisting Chinese tech companies for years – including the electronics giant Huawei – is now targeting TikTok, the viral short-video app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, among others. Citing national security concerns, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the app might deliver Americans’ personal data into “the hands of the Chinese Communist Party”.

Yet, before these claims surfaced, TikTok was already operationally independent from its parent ByteDance. TikTok’s recently appointed CEO, Kevin Mayer, is an American and a former Disney executive, and the app’s data centres are located in Singapore and California.

In addition, ByteDance, a start-up worth more than US$75 billion, is a privately owned company which has raised about 70 per cent of its equity capital from investors in the United States.

Lashing out at Chinese tech groups on national security grounds is not new to Washington. According to some pundits, technically, TikTok can send data to China, since the government by law compels all Chinese internet companies to hand over data on demand, wherever the company operates. However, there is no evidence so far that this has ever taken place.