International

Tiktok CEO defends app’s data policies at US Congress

TikTok’s chief executive Shou Zi Chew appeared Thursday March 23rd, 2023 at the US House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, where lawmakers questioned him about China’s influence and data privacy while they expressed deep distrust.

During the more than five hours of testimony, Chew repeatedly denied accusations that the app shares data or has connections with the Chinese government.

“We’re headquartered in Los Angeles and Singapore, and we have 7,000 employees in the US today,” said Chew. “The bottom line is this: American data stored on American soil, by an American company, overseen by American personnel,” he said.

The lawmakers in both major political parties seemed convinced that the app poses national security risks, citing its parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, and they seemed uninterested in Chew’s answers.

Following Representative Kat Cammack’s lengthy critique of TikTok’s content moderation and links to China, Chew asked the committee chair, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, if he could respond.

“No. We’re going to move on,” she said.

In a post-hearing statement, TikTok said, “Shou came prepared to answer questions from Congress … unfortunately, the day was dominated by political grandstanding that failed to acknowledge the real solutions already underway.”

TikTok has become extremely popular in the US, especially among young people. The platform has 150 million monthly active users in the country, including 5 million businesses that use TikTok to reach customers, according to the company.

It has come under increased scrutiny in the past few years over the “national security” concerns that US users’ data could be passed on to China.

The company survived a ban attempt by former president Donald Trump. The Trump administration first proposed banning the short-form video app in 2020, but that effort was stopped by the federal courts, which questioned the validity of the claims about national security risks.

During Thursday’s hearing, the lawmakers offered no evidence of TikTok harming US national security interests.

“I think a lot of risks that are pointed out are hypothetical and theoretical risks,” Chew said at the hearing. “I have not seen any evidence. I am eagerly awaiting discussions where we can talk about evidence and then we can address the concerns that are being raised.”

Like previous congressional hearings at which tech industry leaders testified, US lawmakers were criticized for a lack of understanding of the tech and social media industries at Thursday’s hearing.

McMorris Rodgers, a Republican from Washington state, repeatedly said TikTok collected every bit of data from a user’s phone.

Geoffrey Fowler, The Washington Post’s technology columnist, said that is not true.

“It (the app) does not collect your location, which is one of the most sensitive pieces of data. … whether it’s watching your eyes, it fits in the same realm like Facebook’s listening to you, kind of urban myths about technology,” he said.

To address the privacy concerns, TikTok said it has spent more than $1.5 billion on data security efforts under the name “Project Texas”, which currently has nearly 1,500 full-time employees and is contracted with Oracle Corp to store TikTok’s US user data.

“Please rename your project. Texas is not the appropriate name,” Representative August Pfluger from Texas told Chew at the hearing.

Outside of the hearing, TikTok gained support from several Congress members who called the proposed ban on TikTok GOP-led “hysteria” about the app’s ties to China.

In December, President Joe Biden signed a bill to ban the app on government devices. Recently, the administration has threatened to ban the app in the US, if its parent company won’t sell its stakes.

Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York joined two colleagues and dozens of TikTok content creators on Wednesday in front of the Capitol to oppose the ban.

“You can ban TikTok, but there are still data brokers who sell our data to other countries. … So let’s not have a dishonest conversation. Let’s not be racist towards China and express our xenophobia when it comes to TikTok because American companies have done tremendous harm to American people,” Bowman said at the protest.

“The problem here is the isolation of TikTok because they’re a Chinese company,” he continued. Behind him supporters held signs of “Keep TikTok”, “My teaching thrives on TikTok”, “My Art thrives on TikTok”.

“I’m very clear on how harmful Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube have been, just to name a few. I mean, President Donald Trump used Twitter to help facilitate an insurrection, an attack on the US Capitol by US citizens. So, while we’re worried about China harming our country, we are harming ourselves,” said Bowman.

“A ban takes away the connections we’ve built, silencing communities that continue to be underrepresented and not given a voice,” said Tiffany Yu, who was disabled and founded a disability advocacy organization.

“TikTok has really been a game-changer for me. It’s allowed me to reach new audiences. … I’m not alone. It’s become a vital platform for advocates across society and across the political spectrum to connect, share their stories and help change people’s lives,” she said.

Callie Goodwin, who runs a greeting card company, said 95 percent of her orders come from TikTok followers. “I’m so thankful that this app has given me the chance to grow my business and to seek this entrepreneurial journey that would not be possible without it,” she said.

A ban on TikTok would be “devastating” to her livelihood and other small businesses as well, she said.

“A ban would be an entirely un-American, undemocratic and inappropriate response to an unproven risk,” wrote Chris Stokel-Walker, author of TikTok Boom: China’s Dynamite App and the Superpower Race for Social Media, in a recent article for The Washington Post.

“Banning TikTok would be completely useless in combating a different, much better-evidenced social media pitfall — the spread of dangerous propaganda,” said Stokel-Walker.

“Banning one platform and ignoring the others would solve nothing, while allowing the deeper problems to fester,” he said. (Int’l news)

International

TAIWAN’S LINK TO CHINA REITERATED BY ZHU FENGLIAN

A Chinese mainland spokesperson on Tuesday slammed the Taiwan region’s leader, Lai Ching-te, for his recent “motherland fallacy,” reiterating that Taiwan is part of the sacred territory of China.

Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, said that the sovereignty and territory of China have never been divided and will never be divided.

The fact that the mainland and Taiwan both belong to one China has never changed and will never be allowed to change, she added.

What has caused the Taiwan question? And why is Taiwan an inalienable part of China’s territory? Here are some facts you should know.

Taiwan has been part of China since ancient times

Taiwan has belonged to China since ancient times. The earliest written account of Taiwan was in the Seaboard Geographic Gazetteer, compiled more than 1,700 years ago by Shen Ying of the State of Wu during the period of the Three Kingdoms.

Starting as early as the mid-12th century, Chinese governments of different periods set up administrative bodies to exercise jurisdiction over Taiwan.

The Song Dynasty set up a garrison in Penghu, putting the territory under the jurisdiction of Jinjiang County of Fujian’s Quanzhou Prefecture. The Yuan Dynasty installed an agency of patrol and inspection in Penghu to administer the territory. During the mid- and late-16th century, the Ming Dynasty reinstated the once abolished agency and sent reinforcements to Penghu to ward off foreign invaders.

In 1662 (under Qing Emperor Kangxi), General Zheng Chenggong established Chengtian Prefecture on Taiwan. Subsequently, the Qing Dynasty government expanded the administrative structure in Taiwan. In 1727 (under Qing Emperor Yongzheng), the administration on the island was reconstituted as the Prefecture Administration of Taiwan and incorporated the new Penghu Canton. The territory then officially became known as Taiwan. In 1885 (under Qing Emperor Guangxu), the government formally made Taiwan a full province.

Taiwan was ceded due to Japan’s aggression

However, through a war of aggression against China in April 1895, Japan forced the defeated the Qing government to cede Taiwan and the Penghu Islands.

In July 1937, Japan launched an all-out war of aggression against China. In December 1941, the Chinese government issued a declaration of war against Japan, announcing to the world that all treaties, conventions, agreements and contracts regarding relations between China and Japan had been abrogated and that China would recover Taiwan and the Penghu Islands.

In December 1943, the Cairo Declaration was issued by the Chinese, U.S. and British governments, stipulating that Japan should return to China all the territories it had stolen from the Chinese, including northeast China, Taiwan and the Penghu Islands.

The Potsdam Proclamation, signed by China, the U.S. and Britain in 1945 (later adhered to by the Soviet Union), stipulated that “The terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out.” In August 1945, Japan surrendered and promised that it would faithfully fulfill the obligations laid out in the Potsdam Proclamation.

On October 25, 1945, the Chinese government recovered Taiwan and the Penghu Islands, resuming the exercise of sovereignty over Taiwan. From that point forward, China had recovered Taiwan de jure and de facto through a host of documents with international legal effect.

Two sides of the Straits belong to one China

On October 1, 1949, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded. The new government replaced the previous Kuomintang (KMT) regime, becoming the successor to the Republic of China (1912-1949) and the only legitimate government of the whole of China.

As a natural result, the government of the PRC should enjoy and exercise China’s full sovereignty, which includes its sovereignty over Taiwan, according to a white paper titled “The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era,” published by the Chinese government in 2022.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has said that both the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation stated in explicit terms that all the territories Japan had stolen from the Chinese, such as Taiwan and the Penghu Islands, shall be restored to China, and this constitutes an important part of the post-war international order.

Speaking at the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly in late September, Wang told world leaders in the audience that Taiwan being “an inalienable part of China’s territory” is both “the history and the reality.”

Noting the 26th session of the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 2758 in 1971 with an overwhelming majority, deciding to restore all the rights of the People’s Republic of China at the UN, to recognize the representatives of the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the only legitimate representatives of China to the UN, and to expel forthwith the representatives of the Taiwan region from the UN and all the organizations related to it, Wang said “once and for all, the resolution resolved the issue of the representation of the whole of China, including Taiwan, in the UN.”

The resolution, Wang continued, made clear that there is no such thing as “two Chinas,” or “one China, one Taiwan.”

“On this matter of principle, there is no gray zone or room for ambiguity,” Wang said.

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, has stressed on many occasions that the one-China principle is the political foundation for cross-Straits relations.

Xi said that compatriots from both sides of the Taiwan Straits belong to the same Chinese nation during a meeting with Ma Ying-jeou, former chairman of the Chinese KMT party, in April.

“The over-5,000-year history of the Chinese nation recorded successive generations of ancestors moving and settling down in Taiwan, and people from across the Straits fighting side by side to recover the island from foreign invaders,” Xi said.

“The distance of the Straits cannot sever the bond of kinship between compatriots from across the Straits, and the difference in systems does not alter the reality that both sides of the Straits belong to one China, and external interference cannot hold back the historical trend of national reunification,” he said.

International

One-China principle is consensus of international community

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Thursday that no matter what they say or do, the Lai Ching-te authorities cannot change the fact that both sides of the Taiwan Straits belong to one and the same China or stop the historical trend that China will and must achieve reunification.

Spokesperson Mao Ning made the remarks in response to the speech by the leader of the Taiwan region, Lai Ching-te, today at a daily press briefing.

Mao said Lai Ching-te’s words attempt to sever the historical connections between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits. He is again peddling various versions of the “Taiwan independence” narrative, such as “China and Taiwan are not subordinate to each other” and “Taiwan has sovereignty.”

It once again exposes that he is hellbent on advancing “Taiwan independence” and has the ill intention of heightening tensions in the Taiwan Straits for his selfish political interest, Mao said.

There is but one China in the world. Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory. The government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China, Mao said, adding that the attempt to seek independence and make provocations will lead nowhere.

Noting that the one-China principle is a basic norm in international relations and prevailing international consensus, Mao said Taiwan has never been a country and will never be a country and thus has no so-called sovereignty.

Upholding the one-China principle, opposing “Taiwan independence” and opposing “two Chinas” and “one China, one Taiwan” is our consistent position on the Taiwan region’s external exchanges and participation in international activities, she said.

“Let me stress once again that China opposes all forms of official interactions between Taiwan and countries having diplomatic relations with China and interference in China’s internal affairs in any way and under any excuse,” Mao said.

We urge the few foreign politicians who visit Taiwan to correct their wrong words and deeds, stop meddling in China’s internal affairs, and stop conniving at and supporting “Taiwan independence” and heightening tensions in the Taiwan Straits, she said. (PR/GIS)

International

SENIORS CELEBRATED AT THE SOUBLE NINTH FESTIVAL

China honours its elders

Across China, seniors are joyfully celebrating the Double Ninth Festival, a traditional holiday that falls on the ninth day of the ninth month in the Chinese lunar calendar. This day, officially recognized as Senior’s Day, embodies new meanings of respect, care and support for the elderly. Communities are hosting vibrant events such as long-table banquets, singing competitions and dance performances, all filled with joy and harmony. Let’s honor our elders and cherish their wisdom as we come together in celebration.