By Lucy Adautin
The House, backed by broad bipartisan support, swiftly passed a bill on Wednesday compelling TikTok’s Chinese owner to sell the popular video app or face a ban in the United States. This intensifies the ongoing clash between Beijing and Washington, highlighting concerns about technology control impacting national security, free speech, and the social media sector.
Republican leaders expedited the bill with minimal debate, resulting in a decisive vote of 352-65, underscoring widespread endorsement for legislation targeting China during an election year. Despite TikTok’s efforts to rally its 170 million U.S. users against the measure, the action proceeded amid the Biden administration’s arguments that Chinese ownership poses significant national security risks to the United States.
The result was a bipartisan coalition behind the measure that included Republicans, who defied former President Donald J. Trump in supporting it, and Democrats, who also fell in line behind a bill that President Biden has said he would sign.
The bill faces a difficult road to passage in the Senate, where Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, has been noncommittal about bringing it to the floor for a vote and where some lawmakers have vowed to fight it.
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Since 2020, TikTok has faced mounting scrutiny, with lawmakers asserting that Beijing’s ties to ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, pose national security threats. The legislation targets ByteDance, urging it to divest TikTok to non-Chinese entities within six months. Approval from the president would be required for the sale to proceed, contingent upon addressing national security apprehensions. Failure to execute the sale would result in a ban on the app.
Representative Mike Gallagher, the Wisconsin Republican who is among the lawmakers leading the bill, said on the floor before the vote that it “forces TikTok to break up with the Chinese Communist Party.
“This is a common-sense measure to protect our national security,” he said.
If the bill were to become a law, it would likely deepen a cold war between the United States and China over the control of important technologies.
On Wednesday, before the House vote, Beijing condemned the push by U.S. lawmakers and rejected that TikTok was a danger to the United States. At a daily press briefing, Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, accused Washington of “resorting to hegemonic moves when one could not succeed in fair competition”.
