Chinese Government Sneaks Into TikTok's Board Of Directors

The last dance on ByteDance's board of directors will not go viral, but it leaves the Chinese government with a seat from which to closely monitor the company, owner of the Douyin social network and its western version, the popular video platform. TikTok shorts.

Through the Cyberspace Agency, an official body founded in 2014 that regulates Internet activity in the country, the Chinese government has invested more than 300,000 euros in the latest investment round of the Chinese subsidiary Beijing ByteDance Technology Co, which It gives him 1% control of the company and a seat on the board of directors.

It is a maneuver that comes after several reforms aimed at monitoring the operations of large local technology companies much more closely , and which has forced several of them to halt their plans to go public in international markets.

For those listed on the Chinese stock markets, the past few months have not been easy either. With each announcement of intervention or new regulatory policy, its share price has plummeted, in part due to the flight of foreign investors.

These actions, focused on health and social media startups and technology companies, have been justified since the Beijing government by the enormous amount of personal data they collect from users without supervision.

The justification, however, does not seem to convince outside its borders. In the US, for example, the announcement of the government's entry into ByteDance has led several senators and congressmen to call again for the blocking of TikTo k, despite the fact that this social network is formally disconnected from the business structure of ByteDance and has its own headquarters in California.

Beijing ByteDance Technology Co, in turn, is the only Chinese subsidiary of ByteDance, which is formally based in the Cayman Islands. The company controls both Douyin and the Jinri Toutiao news portal.

The idea of a TikTok block, in any case, is not new. The Donald Trump administration tried to veto TikTok in 2020, amid growing trade tension between the US and China.

ByteDance even considered selling its stake in TikTok to Oracle to ensure the survival of the company, but eventually the US government let the veto deadlines pass and allowed TikTok to continue operating normally in the country.

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