There’s concern among Chinese Americans about being “singled out” by the US government’s TikTok ban, which at this stage will begin in just over a week.
It comes a day after the US Supreme Court heard arguments for and against the ban, which congress passed in a law late year to begin on January 20 (New Zealand time), citing national security concerns.
The US government says the data of the more than 170 million American users of the app could be accessed and used by the Chinese government through TikTok’s parent company ByteDance.
ByteDance pushed back, saying that wasn’t happening, and said the ban would infringe on free speech rights guaranteed in the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
“This country has never taken the step of shutting down a speech platform, much less such an important speech platform,” said Noel Francisco, an attorney in the United States representing TikTok, who spoke to reporters after a hearing at the US Supreme Court in Washington DC on Saturday (NZT).
President-elect Donald Trump had asked the Supreme Court to delay the ban until after he comes into office, to negotiate a resolution.
Trump become a TikTok star in his own right during the election trail, telling voters if they wanted to save the platform they should “vote Trump”.
Te Wu, a Chinese American business professor at Montclair University, told 1News there was little evidence to suggest the Chinese government was doing what the US was accusing it of.
“From at least a Chinese American perspective, it feels unjust,” he said. “The grounds on which it stands is flimsy to start with. National security – we’ve been using ‘national security reasons’ for so many other things. For example, under Trump last administration put tariff on Canadian steel [on the grounds of national security] and Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister, you know, essentially said ‘we’ve been fighting two world wars, we are your closest brother in arms – how can we be a national security concern?”
He said singling out a single social media company was also an issue, amid growing anti-China rhetoric from US leaders.
“I am a Chinese American and there are millions of us in United States. This is just one more act by Congress, by our country’s leaders, really looking to isolate and single out the Chinese community – and I may add that, even though it is the Chinese American community, of course this directly impacts anybody who looks Chinese. They could be Korean, Japanese, Southeast Asian.”
The Supreme Court could make a decision in the coming days – but if it upholds the ban though, TikTok will go dark in America on January 20 NZT.
