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Beijing has hit out at the US after the House of Representatives voted to approve a bill to ban TikTok from app stores if its Chinese owner does not divest the video-sharing platform.
On Thursday, foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said 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.
He Yadong, spokesperson for the commerce ministry, called on Washington to “stop unfairly suppressing foreign companies”.
If Wednesday’s bill is approved by the Senate and signed into law by President Joe Biden, the Beijing-based owner will have six months to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese company or it will be removed from app stores in the US.
On Thursday Steven Mnuchin, former Treasury secretary under ex-president Donald Trump, said in an interview with CNBC that he was putting together an investor group to attempt to take over the short-video app.
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 has tightened censorship.
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. Last year, Beijing’s commerce ministry said it would “firmly oppose” a forced sale by ByteDance.
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 Trump opposes one.
The vote came after US security and intelligence officials held classified briefings for lawmakers to outline the alleged national security risks.
ByteDance had engaged in an intense lobbying campaign to oppose the measure, saying it will harm small businesses that rely on its app to reach new customers.
TikTok generates the bulk of its revenue from advertising but it has taken its ecommerce platform to various markets across Asia as well as the US, enabling brands and merchants to sell goods marketed through short videos.
TikTok Shop debuted in the US in September, generating since then $1.1bn in gross merchandise revenue, the total value of goods sold on its platform, according to internal TikTok financial statistics seen by the Financial Times.
Meta-owned Instagram has emerged as TikTok’s fiercest rival in the US, after its introduction of “reels”, a feature that allowed users to share short clips, cloning the TikTok’s viral video features. Last year, Instagram overtook TikTok as the most downloaded app in the world.
