BEIJING: China accused the United States on Tuesday of “outright bullying” over popular video app TikTok, after President Donald Trump ramped up pressure for its US operations to be sold to an American company.
“This goes against the principles of the market economy and the (World Trade Organization’s) principles of openness, transparency and non-discrimination,” said foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin.
A day earlier, President Trump gave TikTok six weeks to sell its US operations, in the latest escalation to an ongoing political and trade battle between Washington and Beijing.
The app has been under formal investigation on US national security grounds, because it collects large amounts of personal data on users and is legally bound to share it with authorities in Beijing if they demand it.
But Wang told a regular press briefing Tuesday: “The US, without providing any evidence, has been using an abused concept of national security... unjustifiably suppressing certain non-US companies.”
He said the national security grounds for the US’s clampdown on Chinese firms “does not hold water,” adding that the companies conduct their business activities in accordance with international rules and US laws.
“But the US is cracking down on them on trumped-up charges. This is all political manipulation,” said Wang, who warned the US not to “open Pandora’s box.”
China accuses US of ‘outright bullying’ over TikTok
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China accuses US of ‘outright bullying’ over TikTok
- The app has been under formal investigation on US national security grounds, because it collects large amounts of personal data on users
Two family members of Mexico’s education secretary killed in shooting
MEXICO CITY: Authorities in the western Mexican state of Colima said they killed three people suspected in the shooting deaths of two family members of Mexico’s secretary of education on Saturday.
Colima, located on Mexico’s Pacific coast, is one of the country’s most violent states. It recorded the highest homicide rate in Mexico in 2023 and 2024, according to the US State Department.
The local prosecutor’s office said officers killed three suspects in the 4:30 am (1030 GMT) shooting of two women, whom Mexico’s Secretary of Public Education Mario Delgado later identified as his aunt and cousin.
They did not identify a motive in the shooting or say whether they were searching for other suspects.
“Deep shock, outrage, and sorrow over the events that occurred this morning in Colima, where my aunt Eugenia Delgado and my cousin Sheila were brutally murdered in their home,” Delgado wrote on X on Saturday.
Officials tracked the suspects’ vehicle to a Colima home on Saturday afternoon and killed three people in a gunfight, according to the prosecutor’s office.
Investigators found weapons and clothing in the suspects’ home linked to the double shooting.
Delgado was appointed education secretary by President Claudia Sheinbaum in 2024. He previously served as national president of the ruling Morena party.
