Spy in the ointment
Western paranoia turns TikTok into a bogeyman
● Governments in the Western world are moving to ban their civil servants from using Chinese-developed app TikTok. They’re worried, they say, that the Chinese government could use the social media platform for espionage.
The US government is, not surprisingly, leading the charge. But Canada and the EU have recently joined in seeking to restrict the app on work devices.
The White House last week ordered federal US agencies to delete TikTok from agency-issued phones within 30 days — and ensure the app stays deleted.
Also last week, a committee of lawmakers voted in favour of advancing legislation that would, if signed into law, allow President Joe Biden to ban TikTok outright. This could see the app removed from the US versions of the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
However, such a move could prove hugely unpopular, given that TikTok has more than 100-million monthly active users in the US. Banning the app would upset an important bloc of voters — the youth — and likely trigger legal action over Americans’ first amendment rights that guarantee freedom of speech.
But why consider a ban at all? What could justify such an extreme move? What is it about a social media app that keeps teenagers and young adults entertained with frivolous video clips that has politicians on both sides of the Atlantic so on edge?
TikTok, launched to users around the world in 2018, is owned by a company called ByteDance, and is the internationalised version of a Chinese app called Douyin. TikTok topped 1-billion monthly active users last month.
That makes it more than three times as popular as Twitter — and it’s fast closing in on Meta-owned Instagram with its 1.4-billion monthly active users. Its founder, Zhang Yiming, is worth a staggering $55bn, according to Bloomberg, making him the secondrichest person in China behind only beverages and pharmaceuticals mogul Zhong Shanshan and ahead of internet titans Jack Ma (Alibaba) and Pony Ma (Tencent).
At the heart of Western politicians’ concerns about TikTok is that ByteDance could be forced by the Chinese government to hand over sensitive user information, including location data, which it could use for espionage — targeting people in sensitive political or government positions.
They are also worried about China using TikTok to force propaganda or misinformation on their citizens, potentially influencing the outcome of elections.
TikTok has repeatedly denied all such allegations, including that it hands over information to the Chinese state — and so far, no evidence has emerged.
Yet the app has already been banned in about two dozen US state legislative bodies, and some US universities have set up firewalls to prevent access. It’s also prohibited on devices used by military personnel.
TikTok has made multiple representations to reassure lawmakers about its collection of user data and to deny it shares this data with Chinese authorities, to little apparent effect.
Critics of moves against TikTok point out that other apps, including Facebook and Instagram, also collect absurd amounts of end-user data. And while there is no evidence of the US government taking this data directly from Meta, whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s revelations showed that the US, through its National Security Agency, had been hoovering up the world’s electronic data for years — scandalously tapping directly into the undersea cables that carry much of the internet’s global traffic.
It bears mentioning, of course, that China is not a democracy. Though it has partly embraced free market capitalism, China remains an
authoritarian surveillance state led by a Communist Party that doesn’t shy away from draconian censorship and brutality to keep the population subjugated. Its people are not free.
Yet from our vantage point at the southern tip of Africa, all the fuss, especially by the Americans, about Chinese technology seems a little overdone.
It feels a bit like the jingoism of the 1980s when Japan was on what seemed like an inexorable rise, underpinned by technological advancements. Many US politicians at the time argued that Japan’s rise posed a meaningful threat to their country’s hegemony.
In the end, Japanese growth stalled as its population aged and fertility rates plunged. This, coupled with policy and monetary missteps, reduced the high level of domestic savings that had underpinned the rapid expansion of the previous decades. As a result, Japan quickly faded as the US’s bogeyman.
In many respects, China is the new Japan — the central threat to US interests that must be curtailed.
And, once again, it’s in technology where the battle lines are being drawn. By seeking to cut off access to advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment and know-how, the US is actively trying to hobble China’s ascent.
But just as Japan went into a “lost decade” in the 1990s (actually, it turned into several lost decades of low growth from which the country is still struggling to emerge), China is facing a similar demographic shift that threatens to end the exceptional growth that lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
This is likely exercising the mind of Chinese President Xi Jinping at least as much as US attempts to kneecap his country’s tech industry. x