Current Events > Tiktok Saga Continues -Chinese diplomats are quietly meeting with Hill staffers

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Original article: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/17/china-lobbying-tiktok-congress-00152819
"The Chinese Embassy has held meetings with congressional staff to lobby against the legislation that would force a sale of TikTok, according to two of the Capitol Hill staffers. TikTok, which is owned by the Beijing-based company ByteDance, has repeatedly denied a relationship with the Chinese government and sought to distance itself from its Chinese origins. But now, with the fate of legislation to force the sale of the company facing an uncertain path forward in the Senate, the Chinese Embassy appears to be leveraging its political weight to protect the companys future in the United States.

The meetings with Hill staff were initiated by the Chinese Embassy in outreach that did not initially mention TikTok, according to the congressional staffers, one of whom worked for the House and the other for the Senate, and who were granted anonymity to discuss conversations that they were not authorized to reveal publicly. The meetings, which took place with Chinese diplomats, were held after the House in March overwhelmingly voted in favor of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the legislation that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok.

Additionally, in a separate phone call to set up a meeting, an embassy official said that the Chinese ambassador was interested in discussing, among other matters, the Houses TikTok bill, according to a third staffer, a Democratic Senate aide who was approached. The embassy downplayed the national security concerns with TikTok in both meetings, the two staffers said, and sought to align the app with American interests: In one meeting, the embassy said a ban on TikTok would harm U.S. investors who hold some ownership in ByteDance. In the other, the embassy emphasized that not all ByteDance board members were Chinese nationals.

The embassy also sought to claim the company as Chinese, the staffers said, despite TikToks public efforts to distance itself from the origin of its founders. TikTok, unlike ByteDance, is based in Singapore and the United States. In one of the meetings, the embassy argued that the legislation amounted to a forced data transfer of a Chinese company, according to the House staffer. In the other, the embassy argued that the effort was not fair to a Chinese company because the U.S. would not treat a company with a different national origin the same way, according to the Senate staffer."

Lawmakers now angry the meetings took place:
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle aired outrage Thursday after a POLITICO report that the Chinese embassy lobbied members of Congress on legislation that would force the sale of TikTok by its Beijing-based parent company. "These reports are no surprise. The Chinese Communist Party has a vested interest in keeping TikTok under its current ownership structure in the United States so it can influence and spy on Americans, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), outgoing chair of the House's select China panel, said in a statement to POLITICO. The more the CCP digs in to retain control of the platform, the more it demonstrates exactly why we must divest TikTok from the CCP.

"Ive warned time and time again that companies in China are beholden by law to the Chinese Communist Party. At this point, it comes as no surprise that Xi Jinping is heavily invested in preventing a TikTok divestiture, which would put American data and TikToks potential for malign influence out of the hands of the CCP," said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), chair of the Intelligence Committee.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) responded to the POLITICO report with his analysis of why the Chinese government would launch the lobbying push: "Because it risks losing a powerful surveillance capability on unsuspecting Americans and a powerful tool for disinformation and propaganda to advance its interests."

--- I guess lawmakers don't know who their staff is meeting with because I assume they would have said no to any meeting with Tiktok even if not present.