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President Donald Trump is increasingly hostile to China
Chinese video app TikTok is taking legal action to enforce a ban imposed by US President Donald Trump.
Mr. Trump’s executive order bans transactions with TteTok’s owner ByteDance from mid-September.
Officials in Washington are worried that the company could pass information about US users to the Chinese government, which ByteDance has refused to do.
The short video-sharing app has 80 million active US users.
TikTok says it has been trying to work with Mr. Trump’s administration for nearly a year, but has opposed a poor process and an administration that “pays no attention to facts.”
“To ensure that the rule of law is not disregarded and that our company and users are treated fairly, we have no choice but to challenge the executive order through the legal system,” said a company spokeswoman. .
TikTok expects the legal action to begin this week, says BBC Business reporter Vivienne Nunis.
On Friday, a group of Chinese Americans filed a separate lawsuit against the president’s similar ban on the social media app WeChat, which is owned by Chinese company Tencent.
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TikTok users post short video clips on the platform on topics ranging from dance routines to international politics. Its popularity has exploded in recent months especially among teenagers and it has been downloaded more than a billion times in the world.
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But Mr. Trump claims that China can use the app to track the locations of federal employees, gather information for use in extortion, or spy on companies.
The growth of mobile apps developed and owned by Chinese companies “threatens the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States,” Mr. Trump says.
“This data collection threatens to give the Chinese Communist Party access to personal and proprietary information of Americans,” he claims in its executive order.
TikTok says it has never handed over a single US user of data to Chinese authorities.
Mr Trump’s actions against TikTok and WeChat are the latest in a growing campaign against China ahead of the US presidential election in November.
Since taking office, he has waged a trade war against China.
The US is not the only country to introduce blocks on TikTok. India has banned use of the app, and Australia is also considering taking action.
WeChat is very popular with users who have connections to China, where major social networking platforms – such as WhatsApp and Facebook – are blocked.
It is also considered an important tool in China’s internal surveillance apparatus – obliging local users accused of spreading malicious rumors to record a face scan and speech print.
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