WASHINGTON – The White House has given federal agencies 30 days to purge Chinese-owned video-snippet sharing app TikTok from all government-issued devices, setting a deadline to comply with a ban ordered by Congress.

A memorandum on Monday from the Office of Management and Budget called on government agencies to, within 30 days, “remove and disallow installations” of the application on agency-owned or operated IT devices, and to “prohibit Internet traffic” from such devices to the app.

The ban does not apply to businesses in the United States not associated with the federal government, or to the millions of private citizens who use the hugely popular app.

But a recently introduced Bill in Congress would “effectively ban TikTok” in the country, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“Congress must not censor entire platforms and strip Americans of their constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression,” ACLU senior policy counsel Jenna Leventoff said in a release. “We have a right to use TikTok and other platforms to exchange our thoughts, ideas, and opinions with people around the country and around the world.”

China’s Foreign Ministry slammed the ban. “We firmly oppose the wrong practice of the US to generalise the concept of national security, abuse state power, and unreasonably suppress firms from other countries,” spokesman Mao Ning said on Tuesday.

The law signed by US President Joe Biden in January bans the use of TikTok on government-issued devices. It also bans TikTok use in the US House of Representatives and Senate.

In arguing for the Tiktok ban, a top Republican lawmaker on Monday said China is using TikTok to expand its influence around the world. Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, chairman of a new House committee scrutinising China, argued for the urgency of decoupling the world’s two largest economies and pointed to the country’s bid for more influence overseas as a sign that it must be countered.

“The exact same strategy, tactics and technology that CCP uses to control the Chinese people in China are increasingly the same strategy, tactics and technology they’re using to control Americans,” Mr Gallagher told reporters, referring to the ruling Communist Party of China.

Mr Gallagher’s new select committee was set to hold its first hearing on Tuesday at 7pm Washington time, in the latest sign of an ever-deepening hawkishness towards Beijing by both parties on Capitol Hill. 

That has been fuelled most recently by the uproar over an alleged Chinese spy balloon that flew over the US as well as Biden administration claims that China has considered whether to supply Russia with lethal support for its invasion of Ukraine.

China has dismissed what it called “hysteria” over the balloon and said it does not offer weapons to conflict zones.

“Recently there has been too much disinformation about China in this regard,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in a briefing last Friday.

He added that China’s position on Ukraine “boils down to one phrase: to advocate peace and promote talks”.

One of the select committee’s goals is “to emerge with a coherent framework for selective economic and financial decoupling”, Mr Gallagher said. “In my opinion, this is the most difficult and complex aspect of our competition with China.”

Mr Gallagher has been pushing legislation that would ban TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, or force its sale.

But his Bill is not the only proposal seeking to limit the app’s operations in the US.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee was to debate and vote on Tuesday on a different TikTok measure, this one from chairman Michael McCaul, a Republican, who has warned that other efforts to prohibit the app would be challenged on free speech issues. 

Mr Gallagher also said he was very suspicious of a deal that TikTok has proposed to protect data from US users and insulate the platform from Chinese influence. 

He said that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, which is reviewing TikTok’s operations, could be crippled by members representing the Treasury Department that “have been a bit less hawkish on China” than members from the Defence Department or the National Security Council.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The bipartisan House committee will review other aspects of US competition with China, including export controls and outbound investment review designed to limit US capital that Mr Gallagher said could unwittingly fund human rights abuses or advances in military technology. 

Meanwhile, the ACLU on Monday urged Congress not to ban TikTok, saying in a tweet: “A ban on TikTok would violate the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans who use the app to express themselves daily.”

TikTok is used by more than 100 million Americans. 
BLOOMBERG, REUTERS