Beijing has hit out at US legislation to ban TikTok as former Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said he was assembling a consortium to buy the app from its Chinese owner.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Thursday that the US had shown a “robber’s logic” towards the app, which has 170mn users in America. “When you see other people’s good things, you must find ways to own them,” Wang said.
The US House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a bill that would force TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the app to a non-Chinese company within six months or be banned from US app stores. It still needs Senate approval and President Joe Biden’s signature.