The US bans TikTok from government devices. Beijing’s wrath: “It’s repression”

TikTok is the new front of tensions between the United States and China. Washington has required employees of federal agencies to remove the social media app from their devices within 30 days. The Chinese reaction was immediate, speaking of manifest “insecurity” on the part of the United States, which abuses state power to “unreasonably suppress the companies of other countries”. But what has taken place today is only the latest chapter in a battle that has been opposing East and West for several weeks.

EU calls on employees to uninstall TikTok. Italy thinks the same

Last Thursday, the European Commission asked all employees to uninstall TikTok from company smartphones by March 15 at the latest. The decision was made by Brussels technicians who fear access to European data by Beijing officials. Same decision taken a few days later by Canada.

While last Saturday the Minister for Public Administration, Paolo Zangrillo, declared that among the hypotheses being examined by the executive there is also the possibility that the same will be done in Italy. The front of the ban on TikTok therefore widens and tightens the ranks of the more Atlanticist governments. For now, the ban applies to company devices for those who work in institutions. Then who knows.

TikTok: Only a few employees in China have access to data

The matter is complicated. In an interview with Italian Tech, the number one of the institutional relations of the Chinese company in Europe, Giacomo Mannheimer, accused Europe of having taken the decision to ban TikTok for its employees without any notice: “The Chinese government has not never asked for data and in any case we would not give them to them”, said the manager.

Then he specified: “Only a small number of employees in China have access to the data of Europeans”, access necessary “for reasons of security and operation of the platform”. More generally, the company reiterates that “the data of Italian users, as well as European ones, are not stored in China but in the United States and Singapore and soon within the European Union in the Irish data center”.

While TikTok’s strategy “in compliance with the GDPR, is based on an approach aimed at limiting access to data as much as possible, minimizing its flow outside Europe, in compliance with strict security protocols”.

Beijing’s wrath: “They are afraid of an app that young people like”

Reassurances that evidently do not convince. They certainly don’t convince Western governments. Owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, TikTok it has come under fire from US lawmakers who view the app as a threat to national security and had banned its use on government employee devices in a law passed in late December.

Washington’s latest decision, which sanctions the escalation of tensions on the social network, has irritated Beijing to the point of inducing the government spokesman, Mao Ningto release an official statement: “We strongly oppose the wrongful practice of the United States of generalizing the concept of national security, abusing state power and unreasonably suppressing the companies of other countries.” The US government added Mao, “should seriously respect the principles of the market economy and fair competition, stop unreasonably suppressing the companies concerned and provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory environment for companies from all over the world to invest and operate in the US”.

A warning that may sound paradoxical if made by a country that lives in a particular regime of market economy. But the war of social media and technological giants has already accustomed us to sudden semantic changes, where the free market and national interest seem to merge more than elsewhere.