US House Speaker says Congress to move forward with TikTok bill

Politicians from both parties grilled TikTok chief Shou Zi Chew about national security and other concerns involving the app

Devices owned by the US government were recently banned from having TikTok installed on them. Reuters

The US Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, said on Sunday that Congress wouldl move forward with legislation to address national security worries about TikTok, claiming China's government had access to the video app's user data.

In the US, there are growing calls to ban TikTok, owned by China-based company ByteDance, or to pass bipartisan legislation to give President Joe Biden's administration legal authority to seek a ban.

Devices owned by the US government were recently banned from having the app installed.

"The House will be moving forward with legislation to protect Americans from the technological tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party," Mr McCarthy said on Twitter.

TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew appeared before a US House committee for about five hours on Thursday, and politicians from both parties grilled him about national security and other concerns involving the app, which has 150 million American users.

In Thursday's hearing, the TikTok Mr Chew was asked if of the app had spied on Americans at Beijing's request. He answered: "No."

Republican Representative Neal Dunn then referred to the company's disclosure in December that some China-based employees at ByteDance improperly accessed the TikTok user data of two journalists and were no longer employed by the company.

He repeated his question about whether ByteDance was spying.

"I don't think that spying is the right way to describe it," Mr Chew said.

He described the reports as involving an "internal investigation", before he was cut off.

Mr McCarthy, a Republican, said in a tweet on Sunday: "It's very concerning that the CEO of TikTok can't be honest and admit what we already know to be true — China has access to TikTok user data."

The company says it spent more than $1.5 billion on data security under the name "Project Texas", which has nearly 1,500 full-time employees and is contracted with Oracle Corp to store TikTok’s US user data.

Rather than appease legislators' concerns, Mr Chew's appearance before Congress on Thursday "actually increased the likelihood that Congress will take some action," Representative Mike Gallagher, the Republican chairman of the House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party, told ABC News on Sunday.

Former US president Donald Trump lost court rulings in 2020 when he sought to ban TikTok and another Chinese-owned app, WeChat, a unit of Tencent.

Many Democrats have also raised concerns although they have not yet explicitly backed a US ban.