Is TikTok a Threat to US National Security?
The contingency of China hawks in Washington have found a new target to attack as part of its effort to alerting Americans to the supposed threat of an emerging China: The social media application TikTok.
The new Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, has just launched a new select committee whose sole purpose is to investigate alleged machinations by the Chinese government to undermine the American economy and national security.
The committee on “strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party,’ was established in a recent 365-65 votes and is chaired by Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin.
A rising young Republican star, Representative Gallagher has decided to place on the top of its committee’s agenda the Chinese-owned app that has built massive American following. He wants to investigate allegations that TikTok is used as a tool of foreign espionage and of influence by the Chinese government, targeting the TikTok’s 100 million American users.
In fact, Representative Gallagher wants to ban the popular app or force the sale of TikTok to an American buyer, citing data security issues and the potential use of the app by Beijing as a tool of propaganda.
Representative Gallagher’s objections to TikTok are shared not only by the 13 Republicans of the select committee he chairs, but also by the Democrats, reflecting the extent to which a majority of the members of the two major parties in Congress now regards China as an economic challenge and as the US principal geo-strategic rival in what many describe as a new Cold War.
While those concerns are legitimate from the perspective of US security interests and the mirror growing anti-American nationalism on the Chinese side, there is a danger that the views of US lawmakers and policy makers on China would harden into a reflexive distrust and that, like in the case of TikTok, these attitudes would lead to banning any form of US trade and investment relationship with the world’s second largest economy.
Indeed, Representative Gallagher and other China hawks argue that considering it’s the risks to its national involved in dealing with China Washington’s long-term goal should be the decoupling of the two economies.
The Biden Administration is preparing new limits on US investment in Chinese companies after President Joe Biden banned China from buying the most advanced American computer chips and the equipment that makes them.
But notwithstanding these actions and the tough rhetoric, the two-way US-China trade in 2022 is likely to set a record while American companies like Apple and Caterpillar continue to sell billions of dollars-worth of products to Chinese consumers.
TikTok
has said that it has already spent US$1 billion on steps to address US
security concerns. That is being studied now in Washington and observes
believe that the can lead to a “mitigation agreement” that would place
TikTok under a board of directors composed of American executives.
If that proposal will be accepted by the Biden Administration, Washington’s China hawk may consider giving TikTok a break.
Indeed, why not see the popular social media app as marking the benefits of US-China economic relationship, instead of turning it into a victim of the winds of a new cold war across the Pacific that threaten the unwinding of the economic ties between the two countries.