Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/BEIJING: Beijing has lashed out at the United States for banning Chinese-owned sharing app TikTok, saying it laid bare Washington’s abuse of state power.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said that the US “has been overstretching the concept of security and abusing state power to suppress other nations’ companies.”
At a daily briefing in Beijing, he asked how unsure the globe’s top superpower can be to fear a young person’s favourite TikTok app to such a degree?”
TikTok removed from government devices
The White House earlier gave federal agencies 30 days to remove TikTok from all government devices. The White House has already banned TikTok on its devices, The Guardian said.
Two-thirds of American teenagers use TikTok but Washington ays China could use it to obtain private user data, push misinformation and sell out narratives favouring China. US Congress and more than half of the US states have banned TikTok from government-issued mobile devices.
Beijing and Washington are at odds over myriad of problems, including trade, computer chips and technology, country security, and over the Taiwan issue. The discovery of the suspected Chinese balloon over the US skies further strained relations between the two major global powers.
Earlier, Canada also announced that it was banning TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices.
“I suspect that as the government takes the step of telling all federal workers that they could no longer use TikTok on their work phones, several Canadians, from business to private individuals, would reflect on the security of their data and perhaps make choices,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said after the announcement.
Canadian treasury board president Mona Fortier said that the country’s chief information officer has determined that TikTok presented an unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security.”
