TikTok is speeding up transfer of its China-based employees to Canada and other overseas positions as the social media giant faces increasing pressure from the United States to divest from its parent company, ByteDance, over security concerns.
TikTok is offering to approximately double the salaries and to provide housing subsidies for employees in technical and analytical roles if they transfer overseas, according to a
January report by Chinese state-owned media Jiemian News.
Meanwhile, the number of TikTok’s job postings in Canada has been increasing. As of July 1, the number of open positions has increased to
47, primarily concentrating on roles in software engineering, machine learning, and other technical fields, aligning with the positions involved in the staff transfers.
ByteDance is also preparing to build research and development (R&D) centres in Canada, Australia, and other places, according to an article published in January by the Chinese state-owned
Shanghai Securities News. The company plans to mainly recruit locally but meanwhile has sent 120 individuals from China to the Canadian and Australian centres, including personnel in product management, R&D, and operations positions, the article said.
The timing of the staff relocation coincides with the enactment of a U.S. law demanding that the company divest from ByteDance or be banned from U.S. app stores and hosting services.
U.S. President Joe Biden
signed a bill on April 24 requiring ByteDance to sell the video-sharing app within one year or face the ban. This divestiture aims to preserve Americans’ data security and national security interests by ensuring the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) doesn’t obtain TikTok’s U.S. customer data through a Chinese company such as ByteDance, according to White House national security communications adviser
John Kirby.
Under China’s
National Intelligence Law, all Chinese citizens and organizations, including private businesses, are required to “support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts” of the communist regime.
The U.S. government has also expressed concerns about TikTok’s practice of storing U.S. users’ data on overseas servers, given the risks of potential access by the Chinese regime.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew had
testified on the matter before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee in March 2023. He acknowledged that some American user data were still stored overseas at the time but said TikTok was planning to delete this data from those servers by the end of the year. “I believe we will be able to get it done this year,” he said.
The Epoch Times contacted both TikTok and ByteDance for comment but didn’t hear back.
In response to President Biden signing the bill on April 24 demanding TikTok’s divestiture from ByteDance, Mr. Chew issued a video statement the same day in which he characterized the bill as “a ban on TikTok and a ban on you [the users] and your voice.” The company
filed a lawsuit on May 7 to block the new law.
Concerns for User Data
Canadian officials have echoed their allies’ concerns regarding TikTok’s user data security, highlighting ByteDance’s access and obligations under Chinese law to surrender data to Beijing.
During an
Oct. 18, 2023, House of Commons ethics committee meeting, David Lieber, head of TikTok’s privacy public policy for the Americas, was asked whether TikTok has “a parent company in China that has access to user data.” Mr. Lieber
responded with “yes.” He added that the Chinese regime has never requested user data from them, and that they “would not disclose user data to the Chinese government if we were requested to do so.”
Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) director David Vigneault has also warned Canadians
—including teenagers
—against using TikTok. During a
CBC interview in May, he said that while some may dismiss it as not “a big deal” that youth are using the app, the concern is that as they become adults, they could potentially become targets of Beijing, which “will have a lot of information about you.”
Canada, like the United States, has already banned TikTok on government-issued devices over security concerns, effective Feb. 28, 2023. However, while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to Mr. Vigneault comment’s by
urging the public to heed his warning, he did not indicate Canada is considering following the U.S. example of a possible broader ban. Canada is watching to see how TikTok responds to the U.S. move, he said.
FBI Director Christopher Wray has
said that TikTok presents a threat to U.S. national security.
“They include the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations if they so chose, or to control software on millions of devices which gives it opportunity to potentially technically compromise personal devices,” he said in 2022.
ByteDance maintains a CCP committee as part of its corporate structure, whose members have access to view all data collected by ByteDance, including those of U.S. users, a
former ByteDance executive in the United States said in June 2023.
Implications for Democracies
The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in its latest
annual report, published Feb. 5, that China had used TikTok accounts to influence U.S. elections, targeting candidates from both political parties during the U.S. midterm election cycle in 2022.
This concern was reflected in a May 2024
report by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, which described the app as a “glaring Trojan Horse” used by Beijing to influence democracies, including in their electoral processes.
The report also highlighted the use of content in TikTok to spread disinformation that aligns with Beijing’s narrative. This included claims that the United States created the COVID-19 virus and allegations that the CIA funded protesters during Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy movement.
Andrew Thornebrooke contributed to this report.
