Chinese diplomats are quietly meeting with Hill staffers about TikTok

The Chinese Embassy has held meetings with congressional staff to lobby against the legislation that would force a sale of TikTok, according to two of the Capitol Hill staffers.

TikTok, which is owned by the Beijing-based company ByteDance, has repeatedly denied a relationship with the Chinese government and sought to distance itself from its Chinese origins. But now, with the fate of legislation to force the sale of the company facing an uncertain path forward in the Senate, the Chinese Embassy appears to be leveraging its political weight to protect the company’s future in the United States.

The meetings with Hill staff were initiated by the Chinese Embassy in outreach that did not initially mention TikTok, according to the congressional staffers, one of whom worked for the House and the other for the Senate, and who were granted anonymity to discuss conversations that they were not authorized to reveal publicly. The meetings, which took place with Chinese diplomats, were held after the House in March overwhelmingly voted in favor of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the legislation that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok.

Additionally, in a separate phone call to set up a meeting, an embassy official said that the Chinese ambassador was interested in discussing, among other matters, the House's TikTok bill, according to a third staffer, a Democratic Senate aide who was approached.

The embassy downplayed the national security concerns with TikTok in both meetings, the two staffers said, and sought to align the app with American interests: In one meeting, the embassy said a ban on TikTok would harm U.S. investors who hold some ownership in ByteDance. In the other, the embassy emphasized that not all ByteDance board members were Chinese nationals.

The embassy also sought to claim the company as Chinese, the staffers said, despite TikTok’s public efforts to distance itself from the origin of its founders. TikTok, unlike ByteDance, is based in Singapore and the United States. In one of the meetings, the embassy argued that the legislation amounted to a forced data transfer of a Chinese company, according to the House staffer. In the other, the embassy argued that the effort was not fair to a Chinese company because the U.S. would not treat a company with a different national origin the same way, according to the Senate staffer.

TikTok said in a statement that the embassy meetings were “news to us, and it's absurd to ask us to comment on anonymous sources we know nothing about.”

“Since the bill's introduction, we've been publicly vocal about why we oppose the ban bill,” said Alex Haurek, a TikTok spokesperson. “This so-called reporting doesn't pass the smell test and it's irresponsible for Politico to print it."

The Chinese Embassy, however, did not deny having held the meetings. In a statement, embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said that the “Chinese Embassy in the US tries to tell the truth about the TikTok issue to people from all walks of life in the US.”

“This is not about lobbying for a single company,” the spokesperson added, “but about whether all Chinese companies can be treated fairly.”

The statement went on to repeat some of the arguments that staffers said had been made at the meetings, including pushing back on national security concerns, and emphasizing international investment in ByteDance.

The statement also emphasized that although TikTok’s operation is legal, the United States “has tried every means to use state power to suppress it.”

TikTok has armed itself with dozens of lobbyists and spent millions of dollars to push back on the narrative around the company in Washington, where the app’s opponents have repeatedly argued that it’s a powerful tool for China to influence sentiment in the United States. The company has also spent millions on advertisements to rally public support against the legislation and leveraged its consumer base via push alerts that allowed the app’s users to easily call Congress. The conservative Club for Growth, the political kingmaking group funded in part by major ByteDance investor Jeff Yass, has also pushed lawmakers on the bill.

The broad efforts to sway congressional offices may ultimately prove successful, as the Senate remains at an impasse. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, has been negotiating with other offices about the bill’s language, as part of an effort to solidify its legal standing. The House bill’s champion, Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chair of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, will leave the House this month. The forced sale of TikTok is expected to be included in a series of bills released by the House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday around foreign aid and foreign adversaries.

Lobbying from diplomats is largely shrouded from public view, as they are not usually covered by the rules on transparency into foreign efforts to influence U.S. politics. The Foreign Agents Registration Act includes provisions that expressly exempt some embassy officials, said David Laufman, who previously oversaw enforcement of the foreign influence law at the Department of Justice.

“If there were other parties assisting them, like U.S. lobbying firms or strategic communications firms crafting message and preparing talking points, things like that, [those parties] might have registration risk,” said Laufman. “Embassy officials here would not.”

One of those staffers who attended the meetings with Chinese officials noted that the embassy had also previously tried to fight U.S. actions against another Chinese technology company, Huawei.

Publicly, China has also been critical of Congress’ actions on TikTok. In the wake of the House bill’s passage, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the legislation “puts the US on the wrong side of the principles of fair competition and international trade rules.”

Michael Sobolik, senior fellow in Indo-Pacific Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, argued that the revelations of the embassy’s lobbying campaign underscored the need to separate TikTok from its Chinese parent.

“For once, Chinese diplomats have done America a favor,” said Sobolik, the author of a book on U.S.-China relations called “Countering China’s Great Game.” “By lobbying congressional staff to protect TikTok’s relationship with ByteDance, [People’s Republic of China] officials are revealing how valuable TikTok is to the Chinese Communist Party. Losing control of the app would neuter Beijing’s most potent weapon against Americans.”