Beijing denied on Friday, July 11, that it had asked companies to “illegally” collect and store users’ personal information, responding to an investigation launched by an Irish regulator into the Chinese social media giant TikTok. The regulator is part of the European Union’s effort to enforce data privacy rules.

 

 

 

“The Chinese government attaches great importance to and protects data privacy and security in accordance with the law,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said during a regular news conference.

 

 

 

 

Beijing “has never and will never require companies or individuals to illegally collect or store data,” Mao added.

 

 

 

 

She also called on the European side to “respect the market economy and fair competition, and provide a fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for companies from all countries.”

 

 

 

TikTok, which has faced scrutiny from Western governments amid fears that personal data could be exploited by China for espionage or propaganda, has consistently denied receiving requests from Chinese authorities for access to European users’ data.

 

 

 

In May, TikTok was fined 530 million euros ($620 million) by the Irish Data Protection Commission for sending personal data to China, although the company maintained that such data was accessed remotely rather than physically transferred.

 

 

 

With a global user base of 1.5 billion, TikTok operates as a division of the Chinese tech conglomerate ByteDance.