China Hits Out at US Push To Ban TikTok

Beijing has hit out at US legislation to ban TikTok as former Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said he was assembling a consortium to buy the app from its Chinese owner. From a report: Foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Thursday that the US had shown a 'robber's logic' towards the app (non-paywalled link), which has 170mn users in America. 'When you see other people's good things, you must find ways to own them,' Wang said.

The US House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a bill that would force TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the app to a non-Chinese company within six months or be banned from US app stores. It still needs Senate approval and President Joe Biden's signature. Mnuchin said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday that he was putting together an investor group to attempt to take over the short-video app. 'It's a great business,' he said. 'It should be owned by a US business. There's no way the Chinese would ever let a US company run something like this in China.' He Yadong, spokesperson for the commerce ministry, on Thursday called on Washington to 'stop unfairly suppressing foreign companies.'

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