Republican Senator Marco Rubio urged President Joe Biden After China took ownership of a major subsidiary of Beijing-based TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, it blocked the short-form video app TikTok in the United States on Tuesday.

The Biden administration in June was a series Trump era Executive order trying to ban new downloads of WeChat and TikTok.

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“Beijing’s aggression has revealed that the administration sees TikTok as an extension of the one-party system, and the United States needs to treat it that way,” Rubio said in a statement.

“We also need to establish a framework of standards that must be met before high-risk foreign-based apps are allowed to run on US telecommunications networks and devices.”

The Department of Commerce conducts Biden-ordered reviews of the security concerns raised by these and other apps. Did not respond to request for comment.

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“TikTok is headed by executive teams in the United States and Singapore,” TikTok said in a statement to Reuters. “The referenced ByteDance Ltd. China-based subsidiary does not own TikTok.” Added.

TikTok is not available at China..

According to company records, the Chinese government has invested in a ByteDance entity this year and joined the board of directors. This is a move to question how much influence Beijing intends to exert on the tech sector under the onslaught of regulatory measures.

According to corporate information app Tianyancha, a 1% stake in Beijing ByteDance Technology, which holds a portion of the license for Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, and Toutiao, a news aggregator, was registered on April 30.

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According to government shareholder data, it is owned by WangTouZhongWen (Beijing) Technology, which is owned by three state agencies in China, including a fund backed by China’s leading internet watchdog, the China Cyberspace Administration (CAC). ..

While there is precedent for the Chinese government to hold shares in high-tech companies, there is news that antitrust investigations and new industry rules have surged, overturning the authorities’ previous laissez-faire approach.

ByteDance representatives said Beijing ByteDance Technology “is only relevant to some of ByteDance’s Chinese market video and information platforms and holds some of the licenses required to operate under local law.” Stated.

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(Report by David Shepardson and Yingzhi Yang, additional report by Brenda Goh in Shanghai, Echo Wang in New York, edited by Peter Cooney)