Beijing denied on Friday asking firms to “illegally” collect and store users’ personal information, after an Irish regulator helping the European Union regulate data privacy began investigating Chinese social media giant TikTok.
“The Chinese government attaches great importance to and protects data privacy and security in accordance with the law,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said.
Beijing “has never and will never require companies or individuals to illegally collect or store data”, Mao said.
“We hope that the European side will respect the market economy and fair competition, and provide a fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for companies from all countries,” she told a regular news conference.
The social media giant has been in the crosshairs of Western governments for years over fears that personal data could be used by China for espionage or propaganda purposes.
However, TikTok has insisted that it has never received any requests from Chinese authorities for European users’ data.
TikTok was fined 530 million euros (US$620 million) in May by the Data Protection Commission over sending personal data to China, although the Chinese social media giant had insisted this data was only accessed remotely.
TikTok, which has 1.5 billion users worldwide, is a division of Chinese tech giant ByteDance.
