TikTok’s Chinese owner defies the US and says it has no plans to sell the app. The US government wants to ban it altogether

The Chinese company that owns the TikTok app, ByteDance, has announced that it has no intention of selling it, even after the US Congress passed a law that could ban TikTok on US soil as long as it is owned by an owner from China, reports the BBC.

“ByteDance has no plans to sell TikTok,” the company said in a post on a social network it owns. At the beginning of the week, TikTok announced that it would challenge the “unconstitutional” law.

ByteDance’s response comes as a tech news article on The Information website revealed that ByteDance was exploring the possibility of selling its US TikTok operations without selling the app’s algorithm.

“Reports in foreign media that ByteDance will sell TikTok are not true,” the company said, alongside a screenshot of the article, marked with the Mandarin-language message “false rumours.”

The law giving a TikTok ultimatum has gone into effect

The US President, Joe Biden, on Wednesday promulgated the law by which the US government gives an ultimatum to the company that owns TikTok to sell the application, otherwise it will be totally banned in the US.

The way the Beijing regime is tightening its grip on private companies in China has raised concerns in the US and other Western countries about the control the Chinese Communist Party exercises over their citizens’ data held by the Chinese app.

TikTok has always denied that the Beijing dictatorship controls ByteDance. “We are confident and will continue to fight for our rights in court,” TikTok chief Shou Zi Chew said.

According to TikTok, its Chinese founder ByteDance owns 20% of the shares. Around 60% are owned by American investors – Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, Susquehanna International Group. The other 20% is owned by its employees worldwide, and three out of five board members are American.

The Beijing regime has denied that it controls TikTok and has access to its users’ data, and said the US government is “suffering from paranoia” and a ban on the app will “do more harm” to the United States.

However, the law signed by Biden gives TikTok more months to sell its shares plus a three-month grace period until the full ban is implemented.

Editor: Adrian Dumitru