China Officials Use Tim Cook Visit To Criticize U.S. Pressure on TikTok

Officials in Beijing this week seized on a headlining visit to China by Apple's Tim Cook and other Fortune 500 CEOs to juxtapose their warm welcome with the mounting pressure faced by TikTok in the United States.

Cook and other Western business leaders attended the government-sponsored China Development Forum, which concluded on March 27 with talks led by senior members of the Chinese cabinet. Cook's first attendance at the event since the pandemic was further proof of China's ongoing dominance as a manufacturer of top-end consumer electronics.

The Apple executive had announced his arrival in the Chinese capital on Friday with a smiling selfie posted to China's main social media website Weibo, less than 12 hours after Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok, was grilled by American lawmakers in a lengthy congressional hearing about the cybersecurity risks posed by the short-video app.

Chinese officials and state media outlets picked up on the contrasting big tech moments after memes comparing the two strikingly different welcomes flooded the Chinese internet.

"Which country is more open toward foreign businesses?" Hua Chunying, China's assistant foreign minister, tweeted on Monday alongside images of Chew sitting before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and Cook shaking hands with customers at an Apple store in Beijing.

Hua ironically labeled America as an "open market" and China as a "hostile market" in what has become Beijing's new through line to attack U.S. policies it argues are harmful to Chinese business, rebuffing Washington's national security concerns.

Meanwhile, U.S. social media services including Meta and Twitter have been banned in China for over a decade. Chinese users don't have access to TikTok either—they're offered ByteDance's highly regulated sister app Douyin instead.

It may be an unwelcome development for Apple, which would've wanted Cook's trip to have been dispatched from political rhetoric emerging in Washington or Beijing, given the company's continued reliance on China's manufacturing base for its leading products, including nearly all iPhone, iPad and Mac models.

In a keynote address at the business forum on Saturday, Cook praised Apple's 30-year relationship with China as "symbiotic." This dependence is likely to continue: It could take Apple eight years to move just 10 percent of its production capacity outside of China, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence estimate last year.

The Cupertino tech giant was otherwise smart to avoid overt political symbolism. After he spoke at the government-backed event, Cook skipped a photo op with Qin Gang, the Chinese foreign minister, who posed with other executives.

On Monday, Cook was among the speakers at a large business meeting led by China's Premier Li Qiang, a gathering also attended by Qin, according to footage aired by CCTV. The Apple CEO met Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao on the same day.

Apple didn't return an email seeking comment about Hua's Twitter meme before publication.

At Odds Over TikTok

TikTok already faced insurmountable odds before Chew's five-hour testimony on Thursday in front of the bipartisan House panel to allay fears that Beijing could manipulate the app through ByteDance, its Chinese-owned parent company.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have two major concerns: TikTok's collection of U.S. user data and fundamental control of its proprietary algorithm, which decides what users see on their screen.

The company says it has already spent $1.5 billion on mitigation efforts to address the first issue by onshoring data storage as part of something known as Project Texas. It has struggled to convince policymakers about the second point.

TikTok's insistence that its operations are wholly independent from the Chinese government weren't helped when, just hours before Chew's hearing, a spokesperson from China's commerce ministry said Beijing would "firmly oppose" a U.S. order for ByteDance to sell its stake in the app.

China's public backing of TikTok, the country's most successful tech export to date, continued this week. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Monday said the U.S. had "no evidence or proof" that the app posed a national security threat.

"The U.S. should respect the principles of market economy and fair competition, stop suppressing foreign companies and provide an open, fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for foreign companies investing and operating in the U.S.," she said.

Reps. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the Republican chair and Democratic ranking member of the House selection committee on China, were among those not convinced by Chew's testimony, they told ABC News' This Week on Monday.

"I think this has actually increased the likelihood that Congress will take some action," said Gallagher of the probability that TikTok will be restricted or forced into divestiture.

"The key part that is missing from Project Texas' mitigation strategy is control of the algorithm. That's really what we need to address," he continued. "They've actually united Republicans and Democrats out of a concern of allowing the CCP to control the most dominant media platform in America," he said, referring to China's long-ruling Communist Party.

Chew told lawmakers that 150 million Americans risked losing access to one of their favorite apps. Observers have suggested a ban could impact voters in 2024.

"While TikTok is another general social media app, and we have a generalized concern about these social media apps, it's different in kind from any other social media app because its parent company is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party," Krishnamoorthi said. "That is why, on bipartisan basis, we've banned TikTok from all federal devices."

Do you have a tip on a world news story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about China? Let us know via worldnews@newsweek.com.