March 1 – The White House on Monday gave government agencies 30 days to ensure employees did not have the Chinese-owned app on federal devices.
The order follows similar moves by the EU and Canada in recent weeks.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman accused the United States of abusing state power to suppress foreign companies.
“We strongly oppose such wrong actions,” spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters during a press conference on Tuesday. “The US government must uphold the principles of the market economy and fair competition, stop repressing business, and provide an open, fair, and non-discriminatory environment for foreign companies in the US.”
“How insecure can the world’s leading superpower like the United States be to fear the favorite app of young people like that?” she added.
Western officials have grown increasingly concerned about the popular video-sharing app, owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, in recent months.
However, Australia said it had not received any advice from its intelligence services recommending that it follow the examples of the US, the EU and Canada.
TikTok has faced accusations that it collects user data and hands it over to the Chinese government, and some intelligence agencies are concerned that sensitive information could be exposed when the app is downloaded to government devices.
The company insists it does not operate any differently from other social media companies and says it would never comply with a data transfer order.
On Monday, the director of the US Office of Management and Budget, Shalanda Young, told agencies that they had to delete the app from all state-issued phones to protect sensitive data.
The agency said the guidance marked a “critical step in addressing the risks the app poses to sensitive government data.”
Some federal offices, including the White House and the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and State, have already banned TikTok on their devices.
US Federal Information Security Director Chris DeRusha said the move emphasized the Biden administration’s “continued commitment to securing our digital infrastructure and protecting the security and privacy of the American people.”
Tuesday’s announcement follows the passage of legislation by the US House of Representatives in December that banned the use of TikTok on state-issued phones and gave the White House 60 days to issue policy directives. the agency.
And congressional Republicans are expected to pass more legislation in the coming weeks that would give President Joe Biden the power to ban the app nationwide.
“We hope that when it comes to addressing national security concerns about TikTok beyond government devices, Congress will explore solutions that do not have the effect of censoring the voices of millions of Americans,” a TikTok spokesperson told the BBC.
Canada also imposed a new ban on the app on government devices, starting Tuesday. The decision followed a review by the country’s chief information officer, who ruled that the app posed “an unacceptable level of privacy and security risk.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there were enough security concerns surrounding the app to demand the change.
“This may be the first step, this may be the only step we have to take,” he told a news conference near Toronto on Monday.
And the European Parliament also approved a ban on the app on staff phones, following the move by the European Commission last week.
A TikTok spokesperson told the BBC that the bans had been adopted “without any deliberation” and amounted to “little more than political theatre”.
