As the relationship between China and the United States deteriorates and the two nations toss threats back and forth at one another, it’s becoming clear that companies from both countries are eventually going to have to declare their allegiance.
We already know that social media and tech giants like Google and Meta regularly do the bidding of their Chinese masters with regard to censorship and surveillance of the Chinese people.
But what about Chinese companies in America? Where do the loyalties lie of American employees of Chinese companies based in the United States?
Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, has no hesitation in declaring whose side he’s on. CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Beckerman no less than five times, “Do you acknowledge that the Chinese government has Uyghurs and others in concentration camps?” And five times, Beckerman responded, “That’s not what I focus on.”
Just to be clear, the Uyghurs are an oppressed minority in Central China, with two million of them locked behind barbed wire where they’re forced to work — sometimes for American companies. There is forced sterilization and suppression of their religion and their culture. That the head of public policy for Tik Tok in the United States refuses to answer questions about the most egregious violation of human rights happening in Asia is sickening.
And it proves that Donald Trump and the U.S. Congress are correct in trying to banish Tik Tok from the United States.
The company has also been accused of censoring content that is politically sensitive to the Chinese government, including banning some accounts that posted about China’s mass detention camps in its western region of Xinjiang. The US State Department estimates that up to 2 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been detained in these camps.
In August, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a report that China has committed “serious human rights violations” against Uyghurs, which may amount to “crimes against humanity.”
Given a second opportunity to acknowledge China’s alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Beckerman again deferred.
“I’m just not an expert on what’s happening in China,” Beckerman said. “So it’s not an area that I’m focusing on.”
Later in the interview, Beckerman admitted that China and other nations commit human rights violations.
“Look, I think there are many human rights violations that are happening in China and around the world,” Beckerman said. “I think these are very important. I’m not here to be the expert on human rights violations around the world.”
So why not acknowledge the atrocities against Uyghurs?
Despite Beckerman’s claims of not knowing what’s happening in China, TikTok owner ByteDance has reportedly collaborated with the region’s police and the Ministry of Public Security to promote Chinese government propaganda about Xinjiang, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute found in 2019.
Tapper subsequently pointed out that “a viewer might see this and think this guy won’t even acknowledge that the Chinese are committing genocide against their own people” and that those viewers might think that Beckerman is afraid of being fired if he acknowledges Beijing’s atrocities.
“Jake, that’s not accurate, that’s not fair,” Beckerman replied. Tapper then pressed him again: “Do you disagree that’s how people are going to interpret it?”
For out VIPs: Biden Must Be Called Out for Unbanning TikTok
TikTok has a lot bigger problems than denying the nose on its face. The platform has been accused of using the app to gather massive amounts of data on Americans, mostly teenagers. It’s likely that Congress and the president are going to invoke national security to force a sale of TikTok as Trump tried to do, or severely limit the platform’s reach in America.
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