TikTok CEO Zouzi Zhou came under fire at a congressional hearing

Lawmakers lambasted TikTok’s chief executive over the platform’s ties to China during a roughly five-hour hearing on Thursday, underscoring how the popular short video app has become a central battleground in the battle for political, technological and economic dominance between the United States and China.

Zhou Zouzi, the chief executive of Chinese Internet giant ByteDance’s TikTok, has been repeatedly questioned about TikTok’s relationship with its parent company and China’s possible influence on the platform. Republican and Democratic lawmakers repeatedly asked Mr. Zhou whether TikTok spied on Americans on behalf of the Chinese government, interrupting his responses and angrily demanding yes or no answers.

The hearing was harsher than previous congressional hearings involving executives from US social media companies, a rare show of bipartisan unity and complicated by the involvement of Chinese authorities. Hours before Mr. Zhou’s testimony, China’s Ministry of Commerce said it opposed the TikTok sale, publicly rebuking the Biden administration, which had demanded that ByteDance sell TikTok and threatened that the United States might ban the app.

That puts Mr. Zhou, 40, in a difficult position as he tries to portray TikTok as an independent company free of Chinese influence. “Bytedance is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government,” he said at one point. That response clearly didn’t sit well with lawmakers. “This is a private company.”

The hearing and China’s announcement have cemented TikTok’s place in the spotlight of geopolitical tensions between the United States and China.

With the two countries at loggerheads over the sale of TikTok, the app has essentially two options in the United States. The Biden administration could ban the app, which could face a tough court challenge; Or it may revisit stalled talks to find technical solutions to data security problems.

But even if the White House were to consider those options, the remarkable display of bipartisan unity at Thursday’s hearing would be a boon for President Biden, who has taken a hard line on China. With the exception of his tough stance against China on trade, technology dominance, the war in Ukraine and other issues, almost every policy he has pursued has been fiercely opposed by Republicans.

“TikTok’s future in the U.S. is certainly even bleaker and more uncertain than before,” said Lindsey Gorman, director of technology and geopolitics at the German Marshall Fund and a former technology adviser to the Biden administration. “It’s not just one party asking TikTok to address these national security issues, but now it’s being asked by all parties.”

To continue operating in the United States without changing its ownership in China, TikTok has proposed ways to protect its American users by, for example, isolating data. But no security agreement was reached. U.S. intelligence officials have warned that the app could be a tool for the Chinese government to spy on Americans and spread propaganda.