Shou Chew once did an internship at Facebook. It was the summer of 2009 and he was studying at Harvard University. At the time, he probably wouldn’t have thought that one day he would lead the American internet company’s fiercest competitor. Since 2021 he has been CEO of Tiktok, the video app belonging to the Chinese Bytedance group, whose triumph is considered a major reason for the current turbulence at Facebook’s parent company Meta.
On Thursday, the 40-year-old Tiktok boss experienced one of the most difficult moments in his meteoric career. He testified in a testimony before Congress in Washington, with nothing less than Tiktok’s existence in the US at stake. The US government is threatening to ban the app unless the Chinese owners sell their shares.
Little sympathy in the audience
As expected, Chew faced a hostile audience at the hearing. “Your platform should be banned,” MP Cathy McMorris Rogers said at the outset. Tiktok monitors “all of us” and the app cannot be trusted “ever to adopt American values”. Kat Cammack called Tiktok an “extended arm of China’s Communist Party”.
Chew tried to defend himself, lamenting “misunderstandings” surrounding his company. Tiktok has never shared American user data with the Chinese government and would never agree to it. “Since I’ve been CEO, I’ve never had talks with officials from the Chinese government.”
Tiktok has also invested billions in a new structure through a program called “Project Texas”, which, together with the American software company Oracle, is building a “protective wall” around US data and making it impossible for China to force access. “American data is stored on American soil by an American company.”
“They united Republicans and Democrats”
The deputies were unconvinced. McMorris Rogers called it a “lie” that Tiktok is not accountable to China’s Communist Party. “Project Texas” described them as a “marketing conspiracy”. August Pfluger, who is from Texas, even suggested Chew to rename this program. “We don’t want your project.”
Many MPs expressed frustration with Chew’s responses, which they found too evasive. For example, the Tiktok boss could not even get a clear answer to the question of whether Bytedance was a Chinese company, despite repeated enquiries. Chew was also repeatedly asked about the treatment of the Uyghur minority in China. One MP asked three times in a row, “Do you agree that the Chinese government is persecuting the Uyghurs?” Chew was evasive each time.
The Tiktok boss has been attacked by MPs from both parties in a similarly harsh manner and with similar arguments, which is remarkable in the current polarized political environment in Washington. One congressman told Chew, “They united Republicans and Democrats — if only for a day.”
Ahead of the hearing on Thursday, a Chinese government spokeswoman said her country would vehemently oppose a Washington-forced sale of Tiktok. Some MPs took this as a sign that the connection between China and Tiktok is closer than the company admits. “Apparently, China believes it has control over Tiktok,” MP Michael Burgess said.
The fate of the app remains uncertain
Analyst Jasmine Enberg of market research group Insider Intelligence said Tiktok’s fate in the US after the hearing was “more uncertain than ever”. The politicians’ questions were “grueling,” Chew’s arguments in his defense, such as the references to “Project Texas,” “fell on deaf ears.” Enberg said the US business accounts for around half of global Tiktok sales.
In the run-up to his appearance, Chew had already personally visited several members of parliament in Washington, although the harsh questioning on Thursday did not give the impression that he had won much sympathy.
Chew also tried to mobilize his own user community. The day before the hearing, there was a press conference with Tiktok influencers. Chew also addressed his users himself in a Tiktok video on Tuesday. Instead of a suit like on Thursday, he wore jeans and a hoodie, and he said with a serious expression that “some politicians” wanted to “take away” Tiktok from all of its 150 million American users.
Chew runs Tiktok from Singapore, where he lives with his wife and two children. He was also born here, but he spent a lot of time abroad. He studied in London, where he then worked for the bank Goldman Sachs for a few years before completing further studies at Harvard. He then worked for an investment company in Hong Kong and came into contact with Bytedance for the first time as an investor. A few years in the top management of the Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi followed before he came to Tiktok. Here he is in the limelight like never before – and certainly more than he would like.
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