The United States is clamping down its earlier threats made against Chinese-owned applications TikTok and WeChat as it bans them from app stores starting Sunday.
The US Department of Commerce said it is banning Americans from downloading the two applications in any App Stores, may it be Apple’s App Store or Google’s Play Store, in the next 48 hours.
US President Donald Trump is set to decide in the hours prior to the ban if it will allow video-sharing App like TikTok to continue its operations in the U.S. after it has agreed to partner with American software giant Oracle on a technical partnership.
The U.S. government has earlier said it will ban ByteDance’s TikTok and Tencent’s WeChat from operating in the United States due to national security threats and ties with China’s Communist Party.
Both companies have also denied these allegations by Trump and were also backed by the Chinese government who claimed it is the U.S. government’s ploy to tighten its grip on Chinese businesses in the ongoing tech war between the two economic giants.
To address ownership concerns, CNBC reports that ByteDance plans to do an initial public offering of global TikTok on a U.S. stock exchange, according to people familiar with the matter. Oracle will also own a minority stake that will be less than 20% of the new global TikTok. Walmart will also take a stake, though its size is still unknown.
Although Microsoft has earlier been working with the US government to seal the deal with ByteDance, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, a big supporter of President Trump, was already seen as a frontrunner in closing the deal.
US Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in a statement said prohibitions of WeChat and TikTok will ‘safeguard’ the national security and protect users in the U.S.
“Today’s actions prove once again that President Trump will do everything in his power to guarantee our national security and protect Americans from the threats of the Chinese Communist Party,” said U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
“At the President’s direction, we have taken significant action to combat China’s malicious collection of American citizens’ personal data, while promoting our national values, democratic rules-based norms, and aggressive enforcement of U.S. laws and regulations,” he said.
The Commerce Department said the threats posed by WeChat and TikTok are not identical but are similar.
According to the U.S. department, each application collects vast swaths of data from users, including network activity, location data, and browsing, and search histories. Each app is also an active participant in China’s civil-military fusion and is subject to mandatory cooperation with the intelligence services of the CCP. This combination results in the use of WeChat and TikTok creating unacceptable risks to national security.
Tencent’s popular messaging app WeChat, meanwhile, will shut down in the US on Sunday, but people will still be able to use TikTok until 12 November, when it could also be fully banned.
WeChat owned by tech giant Tencent has been a popular messaging app in mainland China with over 1 billion users while many Chinese migrants in the United States have been using the popular app in communicating with their relatives back home.
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