In the US now, every story that has anything to do with China is reduced to "the CCP."
This is a story about a tech company abusing its access to user data to try to track down which of its employees were talking to journalists. This could be a story about a Chinese company, an American company, or a company from pretty much any country.
High level executives at ByteDance are members of the CCP and closely work with the CCP. Journalists are reporting on ByteDance because of allegations that are implied in this quote from the article:
“TikTok has never been used to ‘target’ any members of the U.S. government, activists, public figures or journalists,”
The ongoing controversy with TikTok has always been about the concern of the government of China using TikTok data and manipulation of its content in clandestine ways. It all goes back to CCP.
* Zhang Yiming, founder / CEO of ByteDance until 2021: not a member of the Communist Party.
* Kevin A. Mayer, COO and CEO of TikTok during 2020: not a member of the Communist Party.
* Rubo Liang, CEO since 2021: not a member of the Communist Party.
* Lidong Zhang, Chairman of ByteDance China: I can't find any reference to him being a member of the Communist Party.
* Alex Zhu, founder of Musical.ly, the predecessor of TikTok, and former CEO of TikTok: not a member of the Communist Party.
I'm sure there are some executives that are members of the Communist Party, but looking at the top people, that just doesn't pop out.
> The ongoing controversy with TikTok has always been about the concern of the government of China using TikTok data and manipulation of its content in clandestine ways.
That's the way literally every issue even tangentially related to China is spun in the US nowadays. This is actually a story about a tech company trying to find leakers by looking at the user data of the journalists they met with. It gets turned into a story about how the Communist Party is going to infiltrate and undermine the United States, using an app that teenagers use to show off their dance moves. The paranoia about China has gone just a bit too far for my liking.
Considering that a lot of kids join the communist party like it’s literally a school club, I don’t see how being a member or not is really very interesting. It’s like registering as a Democrat or Republican in states that require that, except there is a bit of gating in the youth organizations looking for good students, or legacy members, etc…
In the US now, every story that has anything to do with China is reduced to "the CCP."
This is a story about a tech company abusing its access to user data to try to track down which of its employees were talking to journalists. This could be a story about a Chinese company, an American company, or a company from pretty much any country.