While there’s no definitive evidence that TikTok is following Beijing’s direct or even indirect orders - TikTok has repeatedly issued assurances that it hasn’t and won’t spy for the CCP - we simply do not know much about the inner workings of the company or any other social media company. And the CCP has a record of making private Chinese companies carry out its political deeds, including censoring and surveilling Americans. TikTok genuinely might want to be like any other popular American social media company - whose business models unfortunately usually involve collecting massive amounts of personal data and relying on recommended algorithms that amplify misinformation and hate speech, while failing to protect the rights of vulnerable users - but the fact that TikTok is a Chinese company makes it extremely vulnerable to CCP demands. The company’s founder, Zhang Yiming, issued a self-effacing public apology for deviating from “socialist core values” and pledged to ensure that the CCP’s “voices are emphatically broadcasted.”
In 2018, China’s media regulator shut down one of ByteDance’s products - the joke app Neihan Duanzi - for “vulgar” content. When they were called out for insubordination, they rushed to confess sins and vowed to rectify. This is the terrifying environment under which the most successful business people in China operate, and they know the price of opposing - or even appearing to oppose - the CCP can be extraordinarily steep.īyteDance executives unquestionably know that too. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) effectively controls the police, the prosecutor’s office, and the courts.
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There is no free press to do independent investigations.Īnd there is certainly no independent court where the disgraced executives can get a fair trial. Discussions on the Chinese internet are quickly censored. Families and friends are threatened by the authorities not to speak publicly. Beyond occasional brusque statements accusing business executives of corruption or other crimes, the government does not disclose details surrounding their disappearances. In 2022, five years after Chinese security agents abducted and disappeared the Canadian-Chinese billionaire Xiao Jianhua from a Hong Kong hotel, a Shanghai court sentenced him to 13 years in prison.Īlthough circumstances differ, all these people’s cases have one thing in common: secrecy. He since has been living abroad, according to media reports. In 2020, Jack Ma, founder of the technology company Alibaba and one of the best known names in China, disappeared for three months after he publicly criticized China’s financial regulators. Four years later, she called her United Kingdom-based ex-husband to warn him not to publish a new book telling their story and exposing the business dealings of China’s top leaders. In 2017, Whitney Duan, one of China’s richest women, disappeared in Beijing. Xu was swiftly cremated it was unclear whether an autopsy was performed. Here are some well-known cases: In 2015, Xu Ming, real estate tycoon and once the eighth richest man in China, died of “a heart attack,” according to authorities, in a Shanghai prison at the age of 44, months before he was due to be released. Some even mysteriously died when incarcerated. Some have returned to work as if nothing had happened.
Some executives have never been heard from again. It’s not uncommon for Chinese authorities to forcibly “disappear” business executives, a practice that has increased in recent years under President Xi Jinping. Just a month before, the billionaire was in a buoyant mood, telling his employees to “go forward boldly” during his firm’s annual party. People close to Bao were dismayed by the detention.
Days later, his firm released a terse statement saying he was cooperating with an unspecified investigation. The latest casualty is Bao Fan, a billionaire and star tech investor. government publicly mulls over what to do with TikTok, including a possible ban, the Chinese government continues to quietly strengthen control over the country’s tech industry and its kingpins. Right, ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, is a private company, but refusing control from the Chinese government might not be a safe option for the company’s China-based executives, given the government’s track record of punishing the country’s business executives for not toeing the party line. It is a private company,” TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said during the March 23 hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “ByteDance is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testifies during a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, on the platform’s consumer privacy and data security practices and impact on children, March 23, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
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