US President Donald Trump has issued an executive order banning any transactions with the Chinese owners of the apps; TikTok and WeChat, starting in 45 days.
The orders on Thursday came as the Trump administration said; it was stepping up efforts to purge “untrusted” Chinese apps from US digital networks and called the Chinese-owned short-video app TikTok and messenger app WeChat “significant threats”.
The TikTok app, owned by ByteDance, may be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party; and the US “must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security”, Trump said in one order.
In the other, the US president said WeChat, owned by China’s Tencent; “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users” and that this data collection “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information”.
The moves come as Washington and Beijing clash on an array of issues; ranging from the novel coronavirus pandemic and Beijing’s policies in the South China Sea. Hong Kong, and Xinjiang, to the US’s support for Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory.
The app has come under fire from US legislators and the Trump administration over; national security concerns because China’s ByteDance owns the technology. They claim the Chinese government could access US user data as a consequence of TikTok’s ownership by ByteDance.