China on Monday slammed Washington for using "digital gunboat diplomacy" after US President Donald Trump ordered TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance to sell its interest in the Musical.ly app it bought and merged with TikTok.

As tensions soar between the world's two biggest economies, Trump has claimed TikTok could be used by China to track the locations of federal employees, build dossiers on people for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.

The order issued late Friday builds on sweeping restrictions issued last week by Trump that TikTok and WeChat end all operations in the US.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian on Monday said "freedom and security are merely excuses for some US politicians to pursue digital gunboat diplomacy" -- referring to vessels used by Western imperial powers during the nineteenth century, which China considers a deeply humiliating period in its history.

TikTok -- which is not available in China -- has sought to distance itself from its Chinese owners.

Zhao said TikTok had done everything required by the US, including hiring only Americans as its top executives, hosting its servers in the US and making public its source code.

But the app has been "unable to escape the robbery through trickery undertaken by some people in the US based on bandit logic and political self-interest", Zhao said at a regular press conference.

ByteDance bought karaoke video app Musical.y from a Chinese rival about three years ago in a deal valued at nearly a billion dollars. It was incorporated into TikTok, which became a global sensation -- particularly among younger users.

The order, set to take effect in 90 days, retroactively prohibits the acquisition and bars ByteDance from having any interest in Musical.ly.

Trump ordered that any sale of interest in Musical.ly in the US had to be signed off on by the Committee on Foreign Investment, which is to be given access to ByteDance books.

TikTok appointed former Disney executive Kevin Mayer, an American, as its new chief executive in May, and also withdrew from Hong Kong shortly after China imposed a controversial new security law on the city.

Swedish public broadcasters ban staff from using TikTok
Stockholm (AFP) Aug 17, 2020 - Sweden's public broadcasters Swedish Television (SVT) and Swedish Radio (SR) said Monday they have banned staff from using the video-sharing app TikTok on their work phones for security reasons.

"SVT's IT security department has found that the TikTok app discloses more information than what is considered necessary" to the app's Chinese owner Bytedance, SVT wrote on its website.

"SVT has therefore decided that employees are not allowed to have the TikTok app on their work phones."

Staff were informed of the decision by email.

Earlier this month, Swedish Radio took a similar decision, because the app "does not meet the security requirements we have on our work tools, such as work-issued phones," SR spokesman Claes Bertilson told AFP on Monday.

TikTok has around one billion users, primarily teens who make and share short videos, often set to music.

But the platform has become the focus of geopolitical tensions.

In late June, India announced it was banning 59 Chinese apps including TikTok following a surge in anti-China sentiment in the wake of a Himalayan border clash.

In the US, President Donald Trump has claimed TikTok could be used by China to track the locations of federal employees, build dossiers on people for blackmail and conduct corporate espionage.

Trump has banned TikTok from operating in the US and ordered its owner ByteDance to sell its interest in the Musical.ly app it bought and merged with TikTok.

China on Monday meanwhile slammed Washington for using what it called "digital gunboat diplomacy".

TikTok ramps up defense against US accusations
San Francisco (AFP) Aug 17, 2020 - TikTok on Monday stepped up its defense against US accusations that the popular video app is a national security threat, denouncing what it called "rumors and misinformation" about its links to the Chinese government.

The video-snippet sharing service launched an online information hub as its Chinese parent firm faced a deadline set by President Donald Trump to divest TikTok before the app is banned in the United States.

On a web page titled "The Last Sunny Corner of the Internet," TikTok maintained it was setting the record straight about the platform.

"TikTok has never provided any US user data to the Chinese government, nor would it do so if asked," the company said in the post.

"Any insinuation to the contrary is unfounded and blatantly false."

US user data is stored here, with a backup in Singapore, according to TikTok.

The company, owned by China-based ByteDance, also launched a new @tiktok_comms Twitter account to address issues in real time.

As tensions soar between the world's two biggest economies, Trump has claimed TikTok could be used by China to track the locations of federal employees, build dossiers on people for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.

The US leader early this month also ordered a ban on the messaging app WeChat which is used extensively in China.

On Friday, Trump signed a separate executive order for ByteDance to sell its interest in Musical.ly, the app it bought and merged with TikTok in 2017, citing national security.

TikTok said the US action "risks undermining global businesses' trust in the United States' commitment to the rule of law, which has served as a magnet for investment and spurred decades of American economic growth."

TikTok also repeated its intention to "pursue all remedies available to us in order to ensure that the rule of law is not discarded."

China meanwhile Monday slammed Washington for using "digital gunboat diplomacy" in the TikTok case.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian on Monday said TikTok had done everything required by the US, including hiring Americans as its top executives, hosting its servers in the US and making public its source code.

But the app has been "unable to escape the robbery through trickery undertaken by some people in the US based on bandit logic and political self-interest," Zhao said at a regular press conference.

TikTok separately Monday announced an alliance with music distribution platform UnitedMasters, playing to budding artists and their fans despite US steps to bar the popular app.

The deal to integrate UnitedMasters into TikTok promised to build on a trend of the platform being way for musicians to be discovered by posting short-clip videos.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

China's Tencent buys into French game developer Voodoo
Paris (AFP) Aug 17, 2020 - French video game developer Voodoo said Monday it had sold a minority stake to Chinese tech giant Tencent which is caught in a standoff with US President Donald Trump over its hugely popular WeChat social media app.

Founded in 2013, and known for its easy-to-play smartphone games, Voodoo is now valued at 1.2 billion euros ($1.42 billion), according to a company statement which did not divulge the amount of the Tencent investment.

The transaction, Voodoo added, will help "develop its growth strategy and adapt its games to the Asian market."

Tencent -- one of the world's largest smartphone gaming companies -- is enjoying a boost from the coronavirus pandemic, with lockdowns forcing billions of people to stay indoors for weeks on end.

The Voodoo statement said its cofounder Alexandre Yazdi will remain the principal stakeholder and will retain control of the group, alongside the current board of directors.

Paris-based Voodoo has developed games such as Helix Jump, Baseball Boy, Snake vs Block, Hole.io, Aquapark.io, and Purple Diver, which have minimalist interfaces and do not require tutorials.

Helix Jump, downloaded 500 million times, consists of guiding a bouncing ball down a spiral maze.

Goldman Sachs invested 172 million euros in Voodoo in 2018.

Trump has recently ratcheted up tensions with China and has announced a ban from mid-September on Chinese internet giants WeChat and TikTok, citing national security concerns.

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Trump targets TikTok again with new executive order
San Francisco (AFP) Aug 15, 2020
US President Donald Trump late Friday lashed out anew at ByteDance, issuing a fresh executive order stating the Chinese internet giant must sell its interest in the Musical.ly app it bought and merged with TikTok. The order builds on sweeping restrictions issued last week by Trump that TikTok and WeChat end all operations in the US, his latest explosive moves aimed at countering China's rising global power. ByteDance bought karaoke video app Musical.y from a Chinese rival about three years ago i ... read more