China hits out at US push to ban TikTok as Steven Mnuchin plots bid

Beijing has hit out at US legislation to ban TikTok as former Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said he was assembling a consortium to buy the app from its Chinese owner. Foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Thursday that the US had shown a “robber’s logic” towards the app, which has 170mn users in America. “When you see other people’s good things, you must find ways to own them,” Wang said. The US House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a bill that would force TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the app to a non-Chinese company within six months or be banned from US app stores. It still needs Senate approval and President Joe Biden’s signature. Mnuchin said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday that he was putting together an investor group to attempt to take over the short-video app. “It’s a great business,” he said. “It should be owned by a US business. There’s no way the Chinese would ever let a US company run something like this in China.” US security officials have said the app poses a risk to national security. China has long banned the most popular western social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and X, as it tightened censorship. However, any sale would require China’s approval under export control rules that in effect give it a veto in any deal that would sell Chinese technology to a US buyer. Beijing’s commerce ministry said last year it would “firmly oppose” a forced sale by ByteDance. He Yadong, spokesperson for the commerce ministry, on Thursday called on Washington to “stop unfairly suppressing foreign companies”. TikTok has spent more than $1.5bn on so-called Project Texas, a corporate restructuring plan to safeguard US user data and content from Chinese influence. TikTok has partnered with US cloud software group Oracle to build a standalone unit to wall off American user data. The debate over banning TikTok has become one of the only unifying topics that Democrats and Republicans can agree on in Congress, as concerns mount about Chinese interference in sectors including education, construction and entertainment. Biden supports a ban but former president Donald Trump is opposed to it.

Full report : After the House vote, Chinese officials say the US has shown “robber’s logic” toward TikTok, and Washington must “stop unfairly suppressing foreign companies.”