US TikTok Ban Shows Insecurities, Misuse of State Power, China Claims

A spokeswoman for China's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, Feb.28, that the US ban on the Chinese video-sharing app TikTok is a misuse of state authority and a reflection of Washington's own insecurities.

In a daily briefing, as reported by ABC News, Mao Ning said that US officials have been overstretching the idea of national security and misusing state authority to stifle other nations' firms.

"How unsure of itself can the US, the world's top superpower, be to fear a young person's favorite app to such a degree?"

TikTok Prominence

Two-thirds of American teenagers use TikTok. However, Washington is worried that China may use its legal and regulatory authorities to get private user data or to attempt to spread disinformation or narratives favoring China.

The White House announced new guidelines on Monday, Feb. 27, instructing all federal agencies to remove TikTok from all government devices within the next 30 days. TikTok was previously banned from White House computers.

Meanwhile, TikTok is blocked on government-issued mobile devices in more than half of the states in the US and by Congress.

Furthermore, there have been calls for the ban to include all properties of ByteDance, the private Chinese firm that owns TikTok relocated its headquarters to Singapore in 2020.

TikTok has raised concerns about the restrictions, arguing that it has not been given a chance to respond to inquiries and that governments are isolating themselves from a platform that is popular among many people.

Canada's Participation

Canada joined the US on Monday in announcing that the app TikTok will be blocked on all government-issued mobile devices.

"I suspect that as [the] government takes the significant step of telling all federal employees that they can no longer use TikTok on their work phones, many Canadians from business to private individuals will reflect on the security of their own data and perhaps make choices," Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters following the news.

The President of the Canadian Treasury Board, Mona Fortier, said that TikTok presents an unacceptable degree of danger to privacy and security after a review by the Chief Information Officer of Canada.

TikTok, according to Fortier, provides extensive access to the phone's contents because of the way it collects data from mobile devices.

On Tuesday, this app will no longer be accessible on Canadian government-issued mobile devices.

As a temporary cybersecurity precaution, the European Union's executive branch also said last week that it had prohibited the usage of TikTok on the phones of its staff.

China vs. US

China has also restricted many Western social media sites and messaging applications for a very long time. Some of these include YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

The US and China are at odds over several topics, including trade, computer chips and other technology, national security, Taiwan, and the recent discovery and shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the US territories.