What a mess…
It was a brutal day on the Hill for TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew —The Daily Caller appropriately called it a “bipartisan beatdown.” Chew certainly didn’t have any friendlies up there.
Lawmakers at the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing unloaded on Chew, many blasting the tech CEO over the potential threats posed by China’s social media spy network that reportedly can view the private data of American citizens with a flip of a switch.
Over the past few weeks (years after President Trump sounded the alarm), members of Congress and President Biden have raised serious security concerns posed by TikTok’s Chinese state-owned parent company, ByteDance —and they’ve threatened a national ban on the app.
Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL) blasted Chew on censorship concerning the internment of Uyghur Muslims in China after TikTok exec Michael Beckerman refused to address it on CNN last year.
Beckerman was sitting behind Chew at the hearing.
“You know [Beckerman] here, he’s sitting right behind you,” Palmer told Chew. “I want to know why, when Mr. Beckerman was on Jake Tapper on CNN and asked repeatedly to condemn the Chinese communist government’s treatment of Uyghurs, when that treatment has been classified by the United States as a genocide, when a UN report classifies it as a crime against humanity, why after multiple questions, Mr. Beckerman refused to address that? Are you afraid of the Chinese communist government?”
“Why couldn’t your vice president of public policy, the guy who’s head of public policy for the Americas, on an American television … why couldn’t he condemn that?” Palmer continued.
Palmer accused Chew of being afraid of blowback from the CCP.
Next up, Florida Rep. Kat Cammack dug into Chew’s relationship with Bytedance and the CCP. From The Daily Caller:
Cammack pressed Chew on his “regular contact” with Zhang Fuping, the editor-in-chief of ByteDance and parent company’s Chinese Communist Party committee secretary. He said he does not have regular contact with him, but immediately admitted to having frequent contact with the CEO of ByteDance.
Kammack then pressed him on ByteDance’s ability to access user data on the app.
“Your parent company, ByteDance, currently can access user data, yes?” she asked.
“We have to be more specific,” Chew said.
“Yes,” Kammack reiterated.
“What’s interesting to me is that you have used the word ‘transparency’ over a half a dozen times in your opening testimony and subsequently again, in your answers to my colleagues,” she said. “Yet the interesting thing to me is that ByteDance, your parent company, has gone out of its way to hide and airbrush corporate structure ties to the CCP, the company’s founder, and their activities.
Absolutely brutal for Chew.
On the other side of the aisle, Democratic California Rep. Anna Eshoo blasted Chew, saying it was “preposterous” that China isn’t accessing America’s data.
“I’m glad you asked this,” Chew responded. “As I said in the opening statement, our plan is to move American data to be stored on American soil.”
“I understand that,” Eshoo said, “but you’re sidestepping — or I haven’t read anything in terms of TikTok, how you can actually say — and you spoke in your opening statement about a firewall relative to the data, but the Chinese government has that data.”
“How can you promise that that will move into the United States of America and be protected here?” Eshoo pressed.
“Congresswoman, I have seen no evidence that the Chinese government has access to that data,” Chew testified. “They have never asked us. We have not provided.”
“I find that actually preposterous,” Eshoo told Chew.
So do we, Ms. Eshoo. So do we.
