If you examine ByteDance's structure technically, you are correct that it does look like just a regular company. But just about everything runs differently in China. All major companies in China have CCP party members on their boards who not only influence corporate policy, but are actually _deferred to_ on anything remotely political.[2][3] At the end of the day the party has the final say in any matters that it cares about. There's actually a fundamental difference that many westerners don't understand about China, and it comes from an ignorance of the country's history in my opinion: there is no real rule of law, there is the current will of the party[1]. Obviously there's a ton of whataboutism that you can misdirect here about how the US or other western countries don't follow their constitutions or whatever, but it is fundamentally different, as the differences in the CCP run very deep down to the daily lives of basically every citizen ("show me a warrant" does NOT fly in China, ever).

TLDR; the CCP does whatever it wants whenever it wants, and is deeply ingrained in every major corporation at the highest levels.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_People%27s...

[2] https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-th...

[3] https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3045053/c...

Source 3 is literally about state-owned companies, and would not apply at all...