Global Times reports today that “China is prepared to prevent Chinese firm TikTok and its advanced technologies from falling into U.S. hands at all cost, even if that means the vastly popular video sharing app risks being shut down in the U.S., because allowing the U.S. to seize the firm and its technology will not only set a dangerous precedent for other Chinese firms, but also pose a direct threat to China’s national security, Chinese experts said on Saturday, a day ahead of a court battle in the U.S. over a ban of the app.”
The DOJ filed a brief to the court Friday night, Sept. 25, in answer to the TikTok motion to dismiss the ban on downloading the TikTok app in the U.S., which is scheduled to go into effect at midnight Sunday. A Federal judge will hear the arguments Sunday morning at 9:30. The DOJ filing claims that Zhang Yiming, the CEO of ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, has made public statements showing he is “committed to promoting” the agenda of the Chinese Communist Party. This of course is not a legal argument, and in fact they don’t even provide evidence of that meaningless claim.
Global Times asserts that “the case goes way beyond just a mafia-style robbery of a lucrative Chinese business and cutting-edge technologies, but a threat to its national security, because the U.S. could find loopholes in those technologies to launch cyber and other attacks on China and other countries to preserve its hegemony,” referring to “experts.”
