TikTok Denies Being Controlled by China, Claiming It Is Committed to Grow in the UK

TikTok denied allegations that it is controlled by China. It says that it is committed to growing in the United Kingdom. According to BBC News' latest report, the video-sharing app's head of public policy for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, Theo Bertram, said that the popular app would not accept any request from China that is asking for its data to be hand over.

"The suggestion that we are in any way under the Chinese government's thumb is completely and utterly false," said Bertram via BBC News.

TikTok's future in the United States was pressured by Washington.

ByteDance, the owner of TikTok based in Beijing, but permanently operates in the Cayman Islands, stated that it is planning to transfer its headquarters in London, after coordination with the U.K. government. However, the U.S. still accuses TikTok of being connected with China, considering to ban the popular app, and will only allow it to continue its operations once it splits from China and becomes an American company.

Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State, said that the American Tiktok users' data are at risk of having their data accessed by the Chinese Communist Party.

"We are committed to growing further in the U.K.," said Bertram, however, he added that TikTok had not made any confirmation about the location where its international headquarters will be based. He said that if the Chinese government approached the video-sharing app to request its data, it would refuse.

"ByteDance's decision on the location of their global H.Q. is a commercial decision for the company," said a spokeswoman for the Department for International Trade.

TikTok claims that its data is stored in the U.S.

The Daily Mail reported that TikTok's data is stored in the U.S., saying that the information is not available in China, as stated by Theo Bertram.

"TikTok is a company incorporated in the U.S. There is zero truth to the accusations that the Chinese state has access to TikTok users' data," he added.

The former Conservative party leader, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, said that the serious concerns about TikTok are as big as with Huawei. Just like Huawei, TikTok has connections everywhere right now, allowing it to grow madly. Its feature that allows users to post short 15-seconds video made it possible for TikTok to be downloaded 738 million times across the globe in 2019.

However, the popular video-sharing app was claimed by critics as a national threat because of the accusations stating that it has ties with China. Other reports said that TikTok allows users to message children sexually. The users were said to have committed the sexual offense three times before the app bans them permanently.

Because of the issue, the policy of TikTok was changed, saying that the app has no tolerance for such behavior. The app's update comes as tensions rise between China and the U.K. over the government's previous decision to remove Huawei's 5G equipment from Britain's mobile networks by 2027.

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