The Trump administration's move to block two Chinese-owned technology companies from operating in the U.S. for national security reasons will end up harming the U.S.' own interests, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed on Friday. President Trump on Thursday night signed executive orders banning any U.S. citizen or entity from engaging in a transaction with ByteDance and Tencent, the respective Chinese parent companies of TikTok and WeChat, beginning in 45 days. TikTok is a social media app for sharing short videos. WeChat is a messaging and electronic payment app. The administration cited national security concerns as the justification for the bans, flagging the data collection activities of both companies and the potential for the Chinese government to obtain U.S. citizens' personal information. "TikTok automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories," one executive order states. "This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' personal and proprietary information-potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage."
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