WASHINGTON, Aug 18 — Republican Senator Marco Rubio urged President Joe Biden today to block short-form video app TikTok in the United States after China took an ownership stake in a key subsidiary of ByteDance, the Beijing-based parent company of TikTok.
“Beijing’s aggressiveness makes clear that the regime sees TikTok as an extension of the party-state, and the US needs to treat it that way,” Rubio said in a statement. The Commerce Department is conducting a Biden-ordered review of security concerns posed by those apps and others. It did not respond to a request for comment.
Corporate records show that the Chinese government took a stake and a board seat in a ByteDance entity this year — a move that raises questions over how much influence Beijing is planning to wield in a tech sector reeling under an onslaught of regulatory action.