Now, as TikTok’s chief government, he’s change into the face of what some Washington lawmakers have claimed, with out proof, is a shadowy Chinese language spying and propaganda machine. When he takes the stand for his first congressional listening to Thursday, he’s prone to face the grilling of a lifetime from lawmakers who argue that the app, now with 150 million U.S. customers, can’t be trusted and should be banned or offered.
Chew, a 40-year-old native of Singapore, has labored to counter American suspicions with arduous logic, telling members of Congress in one-on-one conferences that his firm is unaffiliated with the Chinese language authorities and is dedicated to constructing a “sunny nook of the web” for colourful movies and artistic speech.
“I don’t need to go in and query anyone’s intentions. That’s not my job,” he stated in an interview final month on the firm’s WeWork suite close to Capitol Hill.
“We hear basic unrelated fears, analogies, associations that don’t make sense,” he added, “and for these, I feel the proper method is to be sure that we attain out to know: Is there something extra particular you’re speaking about? And the way will we tackle that?”
His attraction offensive has run up in opposition to a closely polarized and surprisingly bipartisan resistance in Washington, the place tensions with the Chinese language authorities — and broader anxieties about social media and American youngsters — have made TikTok right into a political punching bag.
“The temperature is so excessive proper now,” stated Jim Lewis, director of the strategic applied sciences program on the Middle for Strategic and Worldwide Research, a Washington assume tank. “I might not select this week to go to the Hill except you might have a dying want.”
Chew stated he’s working to beat the “belief deficit” that lawmakers have with not simply TikTok however any firm coming from China, the world’s second-deepest wellspring of tech innovation. His congressional testimony will in all probability be extensively watched by TikTok’s tens of millions of American followers, its hundreds of U.S. workers and its buyers throughout the West, who fear {that a} U.S. authorities campaign might puncture its multibillion-dollar empire.
However even a persuasive efficiency by Chew is probably not sufficient. Biden administration officers, like Trump appointees earlier than them, have argued that TikTok ought to be offered to a U.S. purchaser to resolve nationwide safety issues about how the app might funnel Individuals’ knowledge to the Chinese language authorities or increase Chinese language propaganda — two fees for which the US has by no means offered proof, and which TikTok’s leaders have argued are speculative and unsuitable.
Chew’s testimony might increase uncomfortable questions on what occurs when American tech giants are now not the dominant power behind what Individuals see on-line. Nevertheless it might additionally spotlight Washington’s rising curiosity in utilizing geopolitics to select winners and losers on the web — a difficulty with main penalties for the form of the longer term internet.
TikTok could also be simply the beginning. Of the Apple App Retailer’s 10 most-downloaded free apps in the US, 4 are owned by Chinese language firms, three of which rank above TikTok: PDD Holdings’ purchasing app Temu; the fast-fashion titan Shein; and one other ByteDance app, the video editor CapCut, which has greater than 200 million lively customers worldwide.
Jeffrey Towson, a former professor at Peking College’s Guanghua College of Administration who now works as a tech advisor, stated Chew’s time at ByteDance coincides with China’s ascent on the worldwide web, together with the creation of the primary Chinese language-owned app Individuals know and use.
“The concept that a Chinese language social media firm might break into the U.S. in opposition to Fb and YouTube — that was a loopy thought again then, and now they’re all attempting to do it, however ByteDance was the primary,” Towson stated.
“TikTok is now the case research” for a way American lawmakers will reply, he added. “When you give them the facility to ban social media firms, you assume that is going to be the one time it occurs?”
‘Like all good start-up story’
Earlier than taking up TikTok in 2021, Chew adopted the type of top-tier company trajectory made attainable by the globalization of contemporary tech.
He was born and raised in Singapore, the island nation in Southeast Asia that has change into a outstanding bridge for worldwide enterprise between China and the West. He left to review economics at a London college, saying in an interview final yr that “the factor about rising up on a small island … is you get wanderlust at a really younger age.”
He moved to the US to get his grasp’s diploma at Harvard Enterprise College, assembly his spouse in California throughout a summer time internship whereas they have been each working at start-ups, he informed a Harvard alumni journal. Hers was at a clean-energy firm whereas his was at Fb, the then-ascendant social community that has since change into TikTok’s bitter enemy.
Chew labored as an funding analyst at Goldman Sachs earlier than becoming a member of the Russia-born billionaire Yuri Milner’s enterprise capital agency, DST International, identified for its bets on main tech companies, together with Fb and Twitter. As a accomplice there, Chew helped coordinate one of many earliest investments in ByteDance by constructing relationships with its two younger founding engineers, Liang Rubo and Zhang Yiming. (Milner renounced his Russian citizenship final yr.)
“They acknowledged a possibility to construct a superb product individuals needed,” Chew stated at a DealBook convention late final yr. “I had the prospect to put money into them, we turned associates, and slowly, like every good start-up story, the product grew larger and greater.”
Although identified in the US primarily for TikTok, ByteDance has through the years change into one of many world’s Most worthy software program factories, feverishly rolling out greater than 100 apps throughout classes starting from office communication (Lark) to video video games (“Cell Legends: Bang Bang”).
ByteDance’s first hit, the information app Toutiao, used a advice algorithm to personalize individuals’s feeds based mostly on their tastes and behaviors; the identical thought would drive TikTok to world stardom after it launched in 2017.
The Beijing-based firm now says it runs workplaces in practically 120 cities around the globe, together with Austin, Los Angeles, New York and Seattle. However its dimension and prominence have additionally landed it within the crosshairs of the Chinese language state: In 2018, after ByteDance was pressured to shut a comedy app that regulators had deemed “vulgar and improper,” the founders stated in an apologetic public letter that they’d work to make sure that communist values have been “broadcast to energy.”
In 2021, ByteDance employed Chew as its chief monetary officer, pulling him from one other Chinese language tech agency, the smartphone large Xiaomi, the place he had helped lead an preliminary public providing and announce new traces of laptop displays.
By the point of his hiring, the Trump administration had already ordered the fast-growing app banned or offered to an American firm, and the Chinese language authorities had responded by declaring its expertise a strategic asset, blocking any attainable sale.
Earlier than the Trump implosion, ByteDance employed Kevin Mayer, a Disney government who had helped launch its streaming community, as TikTok’s CEO, believing he’d assist develop TikTok’s world footprint. However when Mayer resigned after three months, citing a “sharply modified” political surroundings, the corporate elevated Chew into the position.
After years of claiming little about its negotiations with U.S. officers, TikTok has in latest months moved to extra aggressively inform its facet of the story, saying it had for too lengthy ceded floor to critics who have been slamming the corporate with baseless claims.
High TikTok officers — in addition to ByteDance’s high lawyer, the previous Microsoft government Erich Andersen — have carried out in-depth briefings with journalists, researchers and policymakers. The corporate has additionally hosted press occasions at a TikTok “transparency middle” in Los Angeles, replete with museum-style displays during which journalists can evaluation how the app’s code and moderation programs work.
Chew and his bosses at ByteDance have pushed the concept that they aren’t so completely different from the tech entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley. ByteDance’s founders have recorded movies of them touring their first Beijing residence workplace, echoing the nostalgic mythmaking that executives at Apple and different tech firms made common by visits to outdated San Francisco Bay Space dorm rooms and garages.
In a video from Washington posted Tuesday on the corporate’s TikTok account, Chew wore the cliche ensemble of American tech geeks — a blue hoodie and denims — and requested TikTokers to go away feedback about what they needed their elected representatives to know in regards to the app. One of many high feedback stated, “You realize one thing went unsuitable when the boss has to indicate up,” with a cry-laughing emoji.
Chew, a married father of two based mostly in Singapore, has spent a lot of the previous a number of weeks in Washington, working to personally meet with members of Congress — together with all of the members of the Home Power and Commerce Committee, earlier than which he’ll be testifying — to clarify the corporate’s place.
The corporate had been negotiating since 2019 with the Committee on International Funding in the US, a cross-agency group generally known as CFIUS, on alternate options to divestiture that may fulfill U.S. nationwide safety issues.
In August, TikTok supplied CFIUS a 90-page blueprint for a $1.5 billion restructuring plan that may give the U.S. authorities unimaginable leverage over TikTok’s American operations and open its knowledge and algorithms to inspection by the American tech firm Oracle. Chew has referred to as the plan, generally known as Mission Texas, “an answer no different firm is attempting to pursue.”
However the Biden administration, which has stated nothing publicly in regards to the proposal, has in latest weeks informed the corporate that it received’t accept mitigation efforts and needs ByteDance to dump its stake as a strategy to sever any ties between TikTok and its Chinese language roots.
Although Mission Texas would sequester a lot of TikTok’s U.S. operation in a brand new entity whose leaders can be handpicked by the federal authorities, the app nonetheless depends on code and assets overseen by China-based managers and engineers. TikTok has stated it’ll push ahead on Mission Texas regardless.
Within the conferences, Chew has labored to offer technical particulars of Mission Texas and talked at size in regards to the firm’s investments in youngsters’s security efforts and content material moderation, in keeping with individuals who have attended. He has referred to as on lawmakers to push for industry-wide laws that may maintain TikTok and its American rivals to the identical algorithm.
He has additionally urged them to assume previous the counter-lobbying of TikTok’s opponents, most notably Fb mum or dad firm Meta, which The Washington Put up first reported final yr had funded a nationwide media and lobbying marketing campaign designed to painting its rival as a generational menace.
Chew stated he intends to inform lawmakers through the listening to that the largely lighthearted leisure app now has greater than 150 million month-to-month lively customers in the US — a 50 p.c achieve within the final two years — and {that a} ban would stomp on their speech freedoms and undermine Individuals’ cultural cachet around the globe.
However he has additionally, with assist from a high-level preparatory workforce inside TikTok, labored to metal himself for committee members’ responses, which in all probability will embrace an onslaught of robust questions and moments designed to elicit viral sound bites.
Throughout TikTok’s final congressional look, in September, the corporate’s chief working officer, a former YouTube government named V Pappas, was pummeled by lawmakers, together with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who referred to as the corporate “a strolling safety nightmare.” Pappas stated in Los Angeles this month that a few of the lawmakers’ criticism is pushed by “xenophobia.”
Chew has labored to be outwardly diplomatic and understanding, telling The Put up that some members of Congress he met with in latest weeks had “some misunderstandings” however that they nonetheless had “the proper to ask questions.”
However others inside the corporate have described the conferences with uncooked exasperation, saying a few of the most important lawmakers have been stubbornly misinformed or trafficked in unsubstantiated theories that the corporate is an arm of China’s Communist Get together.
Some, they stated, have been receptive to their concepts in non-public however appeared all too completely happy to assault the corporate when showing afterward nationwide TV. Some lawmakers have informed The Put up they left their conferences with Chew totally unconvinced: “I don’t assume there’s something they’ll say,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) stated final month.
In contrast to in additional conventional company hearings, the corporate has needed to go it alone: Its few allies in Washington embrace NetChoice, a tech {industry} group of which it’s a member. Oracle executives have supplied briefings by request to a couple lawmakers on how items of Mission Texas may work however haven’t spoken publicly in help.
One among TikTok’s few vocal congressional supporters, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) — who has 158,000 followers on the app — stated Tuesday that he would maintain a information convention with TikTok creators outdoors the Capitol on the day earlier than the listening to about how the ban would undermine their free-speech rights.
Beneath Chew, the corporate has unveiled a set of options this month designed to neutralize a few of the commonest critiques of the corporate.
It introduced new screen-time restrictions for kids, who can be restricted to an hour a day except a mum or dad or guardian enters a particular bypass code — an echo of an analogous coverage adopted by Chinese language regulators. It additionally began permitting customers to reset the sorts of movies popping up on their important “For You” feeds, serving to them extra straight form the advice algorithm that its critics have stated is inclined to political meddling.
In conferences with Chew, lawmakers routinely argued that TikTok in the US trafficked solely in viral nonsense whereas ByteDance’s China-only model of TikTok, referred to as Douyin, boosted movies devoted to training and enrichment. The corporate has typically argued that this declare is baseless, given {that a} fast search of TikTok in the US yields hours of instructional movies, and has famous that China’s web makes use of paternalistic social guidelines and restrictions to form on-line content material in a means that may run counter to American values.
Earlier this month, nonetheless, TikTok introduced that it might add tabs to its important feeds in the US devoted to instructional movies about science, expertise, engineering and math.
Chew, who has stated he likes studying about theoretical physics, has stated these are the sorts of movies that pop up on his TikTok feed, alongside stand-up comedy jokes and movies about golf.
The assertion is in keeping with a lot of what Chew has informed lawmakers: that the TikTok they is perhaps so petrified of, and that they might by no means have checked out, is much extra innocent than they assume.
“I study a number of stuff,” he stated with a smile. “Not everyone has had the prospect to make use of our platform, proper?”
Cat Zakrzewski and Cristiano Lima contributed to this report.
clarification
The Russia-born billionaire Yuri Milner renounced his Russian citizenship final yr.