The U.S. government’s ban on the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok reveals Washington’s own anxieties and is a abuseof state power, according to a Chinese Foreign Ministry official.

The U.S. administration “has been overstretching the idea of national security and abusing state power to stifle the businesses of other countries,” Mao Ning said during a daily briefing. “How insecure can the United States, the world’s leading superpower, be to fear a favorite young person’s favorite app to such an extent?”

The reasoning behind TikTok ban

Two-thirds of American teenagers use TikTok, but Washington is concerned that China would use its legal and regulatory capabilities to get private user data or to spread misinformation or narratives favorable to China. TikTok has been banned from government-issued mobile devices by Congress and more than half of U.S. states. Some have even proposed expanding the ban to include any app or website operated by ByteDance Ltd.. This private Chinese business owns TikTok and relocated its headquarters to Singapore in 2020.

Banned social media in China

China has long prohibited many foreign social media and messaging platforms, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Washington and Beijing are at war over various topics, including trade, computer chips and other technology, national security, and Taiwan, as well as the discovery and shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the United States earlier this month.

Canada is banning TikTok too

On Monday, Canada declared it would join the United States to prohibit TikTok from government-issued mobile devices. “I expect that when the government takes the big step of alerting all federal employees that they can no longer use TikTok on their work phones, many Canadians, from businesses to private individuals, will think about the security of their own data and possibly make decisions,” Trudeau said.

Mona Fortier, President of the Canadian Treasury Board, stated that the Chief Information Officer of Canada decided TikTok “poses an unacceptable level of danger to privacy and security.” “With a mobile device, TikTok’s data harvesting methods allow significant access to the phone’s contents,” Fortier explained. On Tuesday, the app will be withdrawn from Canadian government-issued phones.

The Uuropean Union security actions

The European Union’s executive branch announced last week that it has temporarily blocked TikTok on employee phones as a cybersecurity safeguard. TikTok has questioned the restrictions, claiming that it was not given an opportunity to respond to inquiries and that countries were cutting themselves off from a popular network.