TikTok: We have not and will not share US data with the Chinese government

Xu Zhichu, CEO of TikTok, said the Chinese-owned short video app has not and will not share the data of its 150 million American users with the Chinese government, amid growing concerns about US national security, according to Reuters.

Chu will testify tomorrow (Thursday) before the US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee. According to written testimony released by the committee yesterday (Tuesday), Zhou will say that “TikTok” “has never participated in, nor received a request to share the data of American users with the Chinese government.” (Tik Tok) will not pay attention to such a request if it receives it at any time.

He added that ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, is not owned or controlled by any government entity. “I say this unequivocally: (ByteDance) is not an agent of China or any other country,” Chu told the committee.

Critics of “TikTok” fear that the data of the application’s users in the United States could be leaked to the Chinese government, and have launched increasing calls for American lawmakers to ban the application.

Last week, TikTok said that US President Joe Biden’s administration had demanded that Chinese stockholders withdraw their stake in the app, or he would likely face a US ban.

It comes in the face of growing calls to ban the app across the US.

The app’s administration said it has spent more than $1.5 billion on what it calls an aggressive data security effort dubbed “Project Texas,” and has tried to convince lawmakers and the Biden administration to support the plan. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States unanimously recommended in 2020 that ByteDance liquidate TikTok.

Under pressure from then-President Donald Trump, ByteDance sought in late 2020 unsuccessfully to reach an agreement with Walmart and Oracle to transfer the assets of the American TikTok to a new entity, before Trump lost legal battles seeking to ban the application in dullness.

More than 150 million people use the app in the US on a monthly basis, up from 100 million in 2020, the app said on Monday.

Chu says current versions of the app do not collect accurate or approximate location information for its users in the United States.