His detractors prefer to warn him: nothing will make them change their minds. Neither his words nor his efforts. Not even his long trip, from Singapore to Washington, to appear there, this Thursday, March 23, before a panel of members of the House of Representatives. Everyone wants to kill TikTok, the application used by half of the country’s population (150 million users in the United States and 2 billion worldwide).
Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of the TikTok application, is however on the way, and he knows this flight rather well, having done it a multitude of times in recent years. Nothing helps, the Chinese application, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, is still hated in the United States, where President Joe Biden has asked all members of government and administrations to delete the application of all their devices within 30 days.
If Shou Zi Chew is currently traveling to the United States today, it is for an occasion of even greater significance than before. Since the beginning of March, the federal state has wanted to purely and simply remove the application due to growing doubts about the issues of espionage and the exploitation of the personal data of millions of Americans.
The commission that the CEO of TikTok will meet today is simply the one that seeks to seize Joe Biden and obtain the green light from both Houses. To their advantage, both Democrats and Republicans seem to agree that it is time to sign the Stop Act. Selon CNNShou Zi Chew has been preparing every day for the past few weeks, for several hours, for this hearing and this pivotal period.
But TikTok and its CEO are scared. They affirmed it at the beginning of the week, criticizing the posture of the United States of “political theater”fearful “that this approach is not copied by other governments around the world”. It must be said that in Europe or in Canada, the project is also discussed, at least in the context of the removal of TikTok from the devices of members of governments and administrations.
Unlike the United States, these states rely on TikTok’s Chinese servers, where users’ personal data is stored. This will soon no longer be the case, as the company will open servers in Ireland and the UK during the year and continue until next year, TikTok France told us by email yesterday.
One thing is certain, Shou Zi Chew won’t have much time and of possibilities to defuse the bomb that is about to explode in his hands. He will have to contradict everything – and try to reiterate one last time that TikTok has no connection with Beijing and its government.
@tiktokOur CEO, Shou Chew, shares a special message on behalf of the entire TikTok team to thank our community of 150 million Americans ahead of his congressional hearing later this week.♬ original sound – TikTok
The international journey of the TikTok CEO
Between the Singaporean army, Facebook, London, and venture capital, Shou Zi Chew has followed a major international career, where his experience has allowed him to work with the United States, the finance of the City , and the Chinese market (he speaks Mandarin). Born in Singapore and currently 40 years old, the entrepreneur studied at University College London after an exemplary academic career, where he won an elite high school at the age of 12.
It was also in London that he then stayed to work as a banker at the investment bank of Goldman Sachs, which sparked his interest in investment, venture capital (he will work for the Chinese DST Global) and will end up, in 2012, being seduced by the entrepreneurial spirit and discovering, in a small apartment in Beijing, his future collaborators with whom he will launch the future TikTok.
The TikTok CEO recalls his early days with its founder (and then-head), young Zhang Yiming, and the totally new focus on the scene of social media and online entertainment platforms. “The idea is so simple yet so powerful: that you should watch content not based on who you know, but really based on your own behavior,” Shou Zi Chew explained in an interview with Wall Street Journal.
Unlike others, he won’t be joining Bytedance and TikTok right away. In 2015, after going through DST Global in venture capital, he joined Xiaomi as chief financial officer. From there, he forged what he was probably going to need for the rest of his career: experience in diplomacy and international relations, a role he was recovering from the Chinese electronics giant.
In March 2021, as Xiaomi overtook Apple in the ranking of the world’s biggest phone brands, Shou Zi Chew moved to reclaim the role of CEO of TikTok, a role previously filled by Kevin A. Mayer, for a very short period – and representative of the difficulty of the position – only 3 months.
