China blasts US 'digital gunboat diplomacy' over TikTok

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.

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 19th century.

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.

Besides, the company employs 1,500 American employees and promises to create 10,000 jobs.

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 on Monday.

“In the eyes of some US politicians, national security seems to have become a panacea for the US to find trouble for other countries, and a weapon to unreasonably suppress non-US companies.”

ByteDance bought karaoke video app Musical.ly 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.