TikTok CEO Refuses to Say Whether CCP Has Persecuted Uyghurs

On March 23, the CEO of the well-known Chinese-owned app TikTok declined to comment on China’s human rights report, stating that customers are free to” share their views on this issue” on his base.

When Rep. Debbie Lesko was questioned about whether he agreed that” the Chinese government has persecuted the Uyghur population ,” TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew responded,” Congresswoman, if you use our app and open it, you will find our users who give all kinds of content on the platform.”

The Arizona Republican retorted,” That’s not my query.” Do you believe that the Uyghur population has been persecuted by the Chinese government?

Chew responded,” It’s really about to talk about all accounts of human rights misuse. My responsibility is to explain what our platform does in this regard.

Lesko cut Chew off and charged him with” being rather evasive.”

She rephrased,” It’s a really simple question ,” to which Chew once more evaded providing an immediate response, stating that” a platform we allow our customers to freely share their views on this issue and any other problem in the United States.”

Members of Congress grilled the TikTok administrative about the company’s relationship with China and its data protection policies during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing where the exchange took place.

Michael Beckman, the vice president and head of people plan for TikTok’s Americas tree, was seated behind Chew. During a CNN interview in December, he constantly refused to discuss how Beijing treated Xinjiang Uyghurs. Chew acknowledged that Beckerman was a team member who assisted him in getting ready for the testimonial.

Chew acknowledged at the hearing that his company still has some information that they need to remove from overseas machines, adding that he thinks” we will be able to get it done this years ,” despite his reluctance to even find TikTok’s parent industry as being based in China.

In some nations, TikTok has already come under fire. Following Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, and the Executive Branch of the European Union, the U.K. Parliament, announced on Thursday that it would prohibit the application from being used by any political device.

Chew seemed to have persuaded a small number of people at the hearing that his company may be free from the government’s influence.

Rep. Kelly Armstrong( R – N. D. ), the vice chair of the committee later in the hearing, said,” You have absolutely tied yourself in knots to avoid criticizing the CCP’s treatment of a Uyghur population.”

” I wonder what would happen if the CCP demanded that ByteDance turn over all of the information they had on U.S. customers in their hands. I wonder if Jack Ma might have an opinion on that ,” he said, referring to Alibaba, the behemoth of Taiwanese e-commerce. Soon after he criticized China’s governmental system, Ma vanished from public perception for several weeks in 2020. This eventually resulted in the program canceling a$ 37 billion initial public offering of the Ma-controlled finance behemoth Ant Group. In December, Foreign leaders also started an antitrust investigation against Alibaba, an Ant Group subsidiary.

Later, Lesko admitted to The Epoch Times that the CEO’s responses had” appalled” her.

Did he agree that the Chinese public has persecuted the Uyghur society? I asked him a straightforward yes or no question. However, he repeatedly refused to respond to my suggestion, she claimed.

I will continue to hold TikTok responsible for the security risk the game poses to our children and our country because it seems to me that the CEO and, as a result, the company, are influenced by the Chinese authorities.