The location of incorporation bears no relevance on the control on the people and property within the physical jurisdiction of a country. Bytedance's physical headquarters is in Beijing.
> Bytedance's CEO is Zhang yiming, is a Chinese national. And its board has one Chinese national and three non-Chinese nationals. It's owned by a number of international investors, these investors likely have a say in the company as well. These people would not have built a company with Chinese government DNA. Zhang yiming himself has criticized the government in the past. Although he has toed with Chinese government lines in China because he has to. But he personally admires the US and its political culture. The management is also saying they are moving HQ to other countries. I think given the management's mindset, they really want to deal as little with the Chinese government as possible
Then it should be clear how much power the CCP has over them, when he says things like this:
> in April 2018 the government compelled ByteDance to shut down its popular “Neihan Duanzi” (“inside jokes”) app for good due to its “vulgar” content. In response, Zhang issued a letter of self-criticism where he said, “Our product took the wrong path, and content appeared that was incommensurate with socialist core values.” He also promised that the firm would in the future “Further deepen cooperation with authoritative [official party] media, elevating distribution of authoritative media content, ensuring that authoritative [official party] media voices are broadcast to strength.” [0]
[0]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/16/bytedance-cant-outrun-b...
Bear in mind here, I am simply listing reasons why the US government would be marginally concerned about ByteDance in comparison to domestic social media, not defending the mechanisms by which this current administration is handling things.
[0]: https://freebeacon.com/national-security/congress-targets-so...
> They think china is in every corner trying to steal their data
Because they factually are. But as some people misunderstand, they're not interested in your grandma's recipes or your mom's credit card number -- they're amassing data that is a gold mine for targeted military intelligence operations.
https://www.wired.com/story/china-equifax-anthem-marriott-op...
The US subsidiary of Bytedance that operates TikTok is subjected to US jurisdiction and US laws. US government has equal amount of control over it compared to Facebook. TikTok was sued and fined before for breaking under age related laws.
Bytedance's CEO is Zhang yiming, is a Chinese national. And its board has one Chinese national and three non-Chinese nationals. It's owned by a number of international investors, these investors likely have a say in the company as well. These people would not have built a company with Chinese government DNA. Zhang yiming himself has criticized the government in the past. Although he has toed with Chinese government lines in China because he has to. But he personally admires the US and its political culture. The management is also saying they are moving HQ to other countries. I think given the management's mindset, they really want to deal as little with the Chinese government as possible. Working on behalf of the government, nah, its not their mindset. To be honest, it might be even smart for the US government to lure Bytedance management, get them to declare they support liberalism and American values and use Bytedance to spread American values to China. Instead, US gov's action to force a sale is basically extortion and coercion. And having government take a huge chuck of the transaction is stealing personal property. It goes against all that US stands for, rule of law, justice, protection of private property. There are a lot of people in China loves the US and American values like the above, in turn they emigrate to the US and hate Chinese government. That image has definitely being broken a bit by all of this.