Commentary
Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA), TikTok matches the definition of a foreign agent and should be banned.
U.S. lawmakers are considering banning TikTok to protect American data from being shared with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). China’s National Intelligence Law obliges all Chinese companies, no matter where they’re located, to share data with the CCP and aid Beijing in intelligence gathering.
Under FARA, TikTok and other Chinese companies qualify as foreign agents. FARA “requires the registration of, and disclosures by, an ‘agent of a foreign principal’ who, either directly or through another person, acts on behalf of a foreign government within the United States.”
A bipartisan House committee held hearings in March questioning TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew about data security issues and the degree of control the CCP has over the company. Beijing complained, stating that the singling out of a Chinese company was racially motivated.
Despite Beijing’s objections, the connection between TikTok and the CCP is quite clear. The CCP has invested heavily in ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, and the Party holds a seat on the board of directors. ByteDance also has an internal CCP committee, with Vice President Zhang Fuping serving as the company’s CCP committee secretary. Parent company ByteDance solidified its control over the app when Chew, the former chief financial officer of ByteDance, began serving as CEO of TikTok in April 2021.
One way to distance TikTok from the CCP would be for ByteDance to sell off the app. But Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Shu Jueting said on March 23 that Beijing would “strongly oppose” a forced sale of TikTok. Shu went on to say that a forced sale would threaten foreign investment in the United States, especially from China. The very fact that Beijing is so involved in the potential sale of an allegedly private company proves that the CCP has a stake in both ByteDance and TikTok.
People walk past the headquarters of ByteDance, the parent company of video sharing app TikTok, in Beijing on Sept. 16, 2020. Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images
Beijing accusing the United States of singling out the Chinese app seems hypocritical, given how the CCP handles Western media. Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, HBO, Netflix, and WhatsApp are all blocked in China. Foreign news sources—including BBC, The New York Times, The Guardian, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, Time, ABC Australia, The Economist, and Reuters—are prohibited.
Ignoring its own censorship, the CCP stated that a potential TikTok ban represented the overreach of U.S. authority. Ironically, TikTok is banned in China. In the United States, TikTok is already banned from government and military devices. And more than half of the 50 states have banned its use on state-owned equipment.
Outside of the United States, TikTok is banned or restricted in the UK, India, New Zealand, Norway, Taiwan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. These restrictions span the gamut from outright prohibitions to age restrictions or restrictions from using TikTok on government phones.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is in favor of completely banning TikTok on national security grounds. The sentiment has also been supported by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the Treasury Department. Beijing is quick to dismiss these concerns. When the United States banned TikTok on federal devices, Beijing complained.
France, the Netherlands, Norway, and Singapore have comparable prohibitions against TikTok on government devices. The Netherlands’s national intelligence agency, the General Intelligence and Security Service, extended similar warnings to other apps from China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran as they increased the risk of espionage. The justification given by the Dutch Interior Ministry was that the CCP is known to have an aggressive cyber program targeted at the Netherlands. The CCP has also been implicated in cyberattacks and massive data theft in the United States and other nations.
Along with attacks and data theft, there are issues with the CCP controlling the flow of information on TikTok, disseminating its own views, and censoring the opposition. For example, in Russia, TikTok restricts uploads criticizing the government or the military. The app is also used to track journalists, a fact which sparked an investigation by the Department of Justice.
A report submitted to the Australian Committee Secretary Select Committee on Foreign Interference through social media found that describing ByteDance as a private enterprise was no longer accurate. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute found that ByteDance collaborates with Chinese public security bureaus, including the one in China’s Xinjiang region. Human Rights Watch warned in 2020 that CCP committee members at ByteDance are committed to following the Party in technological innovation.
In the House hearing, Chew said TikTok had never been asked to hand over user data to the CCP. And while this may or may not be true, if TikTok were asked, the company would be required to comply. According to TikTok’s “Project Texas,” the company plans to store American user data on U.S. soil. But under the terms of China’s National Intelligence Law, it doesn’t matter where the data are stored. Chinese companies must turn over data when the CCP requests that they do so.
A recent government restructuring has placed the CCP in control of a central science and technology commission. It’s similar to the one Mao Zedong used to develop China’s nuclear weapons program. Deng Yuwen, a former editor of the CCP Central Party School’s journal, Study Times, said this restructuring will mobilize “nationwide resources to achieve breakthroughs.” This makes the CCP’s control of ByteDance even more conspicuous. It confirms that ByteDance, TikTok, and other Chinese companies operating in the United States pose a national security threat.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
