US House passes bills to aid Ukraine, bolster Taiwan, threaten TikTok ban

Legislation that could ban TikTok in the US unless it cuts ties with its Chinese parent company cleared the House of Representatives, 360-58, on Saturday and is on a path to be quickly signed into law.

The proposal, which was included in a package of four bills voted on during a rare weekend session, would ban the popular short-video app nationwide if its Beijing-based owner ByteDance does not divest it within a year.

Three other bills, which include US$60 billion in military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, US$26 billion for Israel and US$8 billion for the Indo-Pacific region, including Taiwan, also passed with similar margins.

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While the House took separate votes on the four bills they are expected to be bundled together as one package to send to the Senate.

The catch-all foreign policy bill containing the TikTok proposal also tackles China's role in fentanyl and sanctions evasion and restricts data brokers from sending sensitive American data to foreign adversaries.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Saturday that the chamber will take up the package next week, with the first vote on Tuesday. The Senate was initially scheduled to be in recess next week.

US President Joe Biden has said he would sign the package, a move that would end months of stalemate over whether the US would fund Ukraine and Israel.

"I urge the Senate to quickly send this package to my desk so that I can sign it into law and we can quickly send weapons and equipment to Ukraine to meet their urgent battlefield needs," Biden said in a statement Saturday.

This latest legislative effort to force ByteDance to divest TikTok comes only a month after a similar bill, which provided a shorter divestment period of about six months, passed the Republican-controlled House in a bipartisan 352-65 vote. It has since stalled in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Maria Cantwell, Washington Democrat and chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, has voiced support for the new House proposal, noting that she was pleased to see the divestment period extended to a year.

Critics had called the March effort unrealistic, arguing that six months would not provide enough time for a divestment. Cantwell, whose committee has jurisdiction over the proposal in the Senate, did not express support for that effort.

On Saturday, Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat of Virginia and chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he was "very glad to see progress towards compelling a divestiture of TikTok".

"This is a strong step forward to shore up our national security against malign influence, and it couldn't come at a more important time."

But experts say that the tweaks to the March version of the TikTok bill do not address a critical obstacle to ByteDance divesting the app.

"The time frame does not affect the core barrier to divestiture, which is China's export control law that could allow the government to prevent the sale of TikTok's algorithm," said Caitlin Chin-Rothmann of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

"One year is still a relatively short period of time to find an eligible buyer and coordinate the technological and logistical processes of divesting a massive platform," she added.

China's Ministry of Commerce said last year that it would oppose a forced sale. In 2020, Beijing updated its rules governing exports to include technology similar to the algorithm that TikTok uses to recommend content to its users.

Sarah Bauerle Danzman, a resident senior fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, said that the main achievement of an extended divestment window is to push divestment until after the US national elections in November.

"This may be more palatable to lawmakers," she said.

Lawmakers, citing China's national security laws, have expressed concern about TikTok's potential to surveil and manipulate Americans through collection of their personal data and algorithm modifications.

Still, TikTok, which boasts 170 million users in the US, hosts over a dozen Democratic lawmakers on the app, as well as Biden's re-election campaign.

The company has said that it intends to fight the potential ban in court if it comes to it.

"It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill that would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the US economy, annually," it said ahead of Saturday's vote.

Clarify Capital, a business loan provider, said in a survey of 200 business owners released last month that 13 per cent of small businesses believe their business will struggle if the app is banned.

In response to a potential ban, TikTok had encouraged its users to call their representatives to express their opposition, an effort that has backfired in some congressional offices.

But despite the change of heart for key lawmakers like Cantwell, the bills may not face smooth-sailing in the Senate.

Senator Rand Paul, a Republican of Kentucky, said he plans to drag out the vote if the Senate is called back to session next week.

Paul has consistently opposed restricting TikTok, citing government overreach and arguing that the app's demonstrated threats so far do not warrant violation of constitutional rights enshrined in the First Amendment. He also opposes the foreign aid package that the TikTok proposal is attached to.

Previous efforts to curb TikTok's influence in the US, which began in 2020 with then US president Donald Trump, have failed challenges in courts.

TikTok, for its part, has attempted to address lawmaker concerns by working with an inter-agency group to implement a US$1.5 billion plan, called Project Texas, to restrict foreign access to American user data on the app. But lawmakers are unconvinced that it will lead to a meaningful separation between TikTok and ByteDance, and have largely ignored it in public discussion.

"Project Texas did not address the [Chinese Communist Party]'s ability to control TikTok through its parent ByteDance," Mike Gallagher, outgoing chair of the House select committee on China and sponsor of the March effort to force ByteDance to divest, told the South China Morning Post last month.

"And as long as the CCP is able to exercise control over the algorithm and over TikTok via ByteDance, the national security threat remains."

Gallagher, who stayed beyond his announced departure date from Congress to participate in Saturday's voting, cheered the results in a statement, while reiterating the importance of defending Taiwan.

Of the four bills, the Indo-Pacific security package, including aid to Taiwan, received the most support, 385-34. The Ukraine vote was 311-112 and the Israel aid was passed 366-58.

Saturday's package includes US$2 billion in foreign military financing for Indo-Pacific partners like Taiwan and $1.9 billion to replenish US defence articles and services provided to Taiwan. It also includes $3.3 billion to develop US submarine infrastructure.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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