The Chinese Foreign Ministry refused to answer questions Wednesday about a U.S. ultimatum ordering China-based ByteDance to sell the American arm of its wildly popular app TikTok or face a ban in the U.S., a contrast with the loud approach Beijing and the app’s supporters have previously pushed.
The crackdown on TikTok’s owner passed Congress on Tuesday when the Senate advanced a foreign aid package with a provision designed to force the video-sharing app to separate itself from its corporate parent in Beijing. President Biden signed the measure Wednesday, starting a one-year legal clock for TikTok’s owners to determine its fate.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin rejected reporters’ questions about TikTok and what ByteDance ought to do. Mr. Wang said he previously made clear “China’s principled position” opposing the crackdown, but he offered no counsel for either ByteDance or TikTok.
The company has about 7,000 U.S. employees. Analysts say only a few potential buyers could afford to make an acquisition offer that may run to tens of billions of dollars.
The Chinese government’s silence mirrored TikTok’s immediate response to the congressional crackdown. After organizing an online protest from its users during the debate, TikTok was low-key as the bill headed to Mr. Biden’s desk after a late-night Senate vote.
In comments to reporters at the White House, Mr. Biden focused far more on other parts of the legislative package, including significant military aid for Taiwan, Israel and, especially, Ukraine.
“This is a good day for America, it’s a good day for Europe, and it’s a good day for world peace, for real,” Mr. Biden said. “This is consequential. I just signed into law the national security package.”
While Mr. Biden was talking, TikTok issued a statement branding the crackdown as an “unconstitutional law” and published a video of CEO Shou Zi Chew vowing to fight the U.S. government in the courts.
“Make no mistake: This is a ban, a ban on TikTok and a ban on you and your voice,” Mr. Chew said in the video. “Politicians may say otherwise but don’t get confused. Many who sponsored the bill admit a TikTok ban is their ultimate goal.”
The measure’s defenders say TikTok can operate in the U.S. if it cuts its ties to its Chinese corporate parent, but the company and the Chinese government have rejected that option.
Marked departure
China’s tight lips and TikTok’s decision to wait until Mr. Biden addressed the legislation represented marked departures from the China-founded app’s efforts to influence the debate in Washington.
When the TikTok crackdown gathered momentum in the House last month, TikTok sent notifications to its users that directed them to call lawmakers and lobby against the bill. The app’s American users are estimated at more than 170 million.
Lawmakers reported receiving frantic phone calls from children. Rep. Mike Gallagher, Wisconsin Republican, told Fox News in March that some children were threatening suicide if Congress advanced the restrictions.
TikTok’s response on Wednesday did not appear designed to scare users into political action. Mr. Chew’s video stressed that TikTok would remain available while the company takes legal action.
“Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere,” Mr. Chew said in the video. “We are confident, and we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts.”
The Chinese government’s deflection of questions on TikTok also represented a shift from its previous actions surrounding the legislation.
The Chinese Embassy held meetings with congressional staff to lobby against the legislation, Politico reported.
After the House of Representatives advanced a version of the TikTok restrictions last month, Mr. Wang sharply criticized the U.S. government’s “bullying act.” TikTok is by far the most successful social media app developed by China to challenge a market long dominated by American technology giants.
“It is sheer robber’s logic to try every means to snatch from others all the good things that they have,” Mr. Wang said in a March statement. “How the U.S. has handled TikTok enables the world to see clearly whether the U.S.’s ‘rules’ and ‘order’ serve the whole world or only the U.S.”
After the Chinese government’s tough talk and TikTok’s lobbying campaign failed to kill the crackdown last month, the tempered responses this week suggest some of TikTok’s proponents are taking a new approach.
TikTok’s allies are styling any forthcoming ban as un-American. The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the legislation Tuesday as “an unconstitutional ban in disguise.”
“Banning a social media platform that hundreds of millions of Americans use to express themselves would have devastating consequences for all of our First Amendment rights, and will almost certainly be struck down in court,” Jenna Leventoff, ACLU senior policy counsel, said in a statement.
TikTok said it is confident in its chances of survival and is seeking to depict itself as insulated from foreign interference or ties to the regime in Beijing.
TikTok defenders have highlighted the uncomfortable fact that many of the legislators who criticized it — and even the reelection campaign of President Biden — have opened TikTok accounts to reach the app’s millions of young users.
“We believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side, and we will ultimately prevail,” TikTok spokesperson Jamal Brown said in a statement. “The fact is, we have invested billions of dollars to keep U.S. data safe and our platform free from outside influence and manipulation.”
Privacy concerns
Supporters of cracking down on TikTok insisted the new law does not necessitate a ban. Sen. John Fetterman, Pennsylvania Democrat, said the bill’s passage was necessary to wall off the Chinese Communist Party from the personal data of ordinary Americans.
“This is not a ‘TikTok ban.’ I have no interest in banning TikTok,” Mr. Fetterman said in a statement. “This bill will simply make TikTok safer by separating it from the Chinese Communist Party so that the data of 170 million Americans — many of whom are children — is protected.”
TikTok tried to portray its operation as distinct from China, but a former employee said last week that the U.S.-based workforce answered to counterparts based in Beijing through a stealth chain of command.
Evan Turner, a senior data scientist at TikTok in 2022, told Fortune that he sent Americans’ data to China-based overseers.
India banned TikTok in 2020.
Montana last year became the first state to try to ban the app within its borders, but the law has been blocked in the courts and TikTok critics said federal legislation was needed.
“TikTok extended the Chinese Communist Party’s power and influence into our own nation, right under our noses,” Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the ranking Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement. “I have been raising concerns about TikTok since 2019, so this new law forcing ByteDance to divest from TikTok is a huge step toward confronting Beijing’s malign influence.”
“It’s official,” he said. “Communist China is on the clock.”