The 40-year-old Singaporean will address the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee at 10:00 am (1400 GMT) and endure hours of serious grilling by both Republicans and Democrats who fear that Beijing could subvert the site for spying or to promote propaganda.
Tiktok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is under immense pressure across Western countries, with government officials in the United States, at the EU commission, as well as the UK and Canada forced to delete the app from their devices.
British broadcaster BBC on Tuesday advised its staff to remove TikTok from their phones.
TikTok's gravest threat is from the United States, where the administration of President Joe Biden has set an ultimatum that the company either dump its Chinese ownership or face an outright ban.
A ban would be an unprecedented act on a media company by the US government, cutting off 150 million monthly users in the country from an application that has become a cultural powerhouse -- especially for young people -- and the nation's most viewed source of entertainment after Netflix.
"Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country," Chew will say, according to prepared remarks released ahead of the House committee hearing.
"TikTok has never shared, or received a request to share, US user data with the Chinese government. Nor would TikTok honor such a request if one were ever made," Chew will add in his opening statement on Thursday.
Despite his assurances, the cards in Washington seemed to be dealt against Chew, with several pieces of legislation, including one bill backed by the White House, already paving the way for a ban of the app.
"Americans deserve to know the extent to which their privacy is jeopardized and their data is manipulated by ByteDance-owned TikTok's relationship with China," Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said.
"What's worse, we know Big Tech companies, like TikTok, use harmful algorithms to exploit children for profit and expose them to dangerous content online," added the Republican.
- 'Stop suppressing' -
In the final months of his term, former president Donald Trump also attempted to ban the app, but his effort was ultimately blocked by a US judge.
During that battle, a potential sale to Microsoft or spinoff to Oracle never got off the ground due to the opposition of China.
Beijing last week urged Washington to "stop unreasonably suppressing" TikTok and said the United States has no evidence that TikTok threatens US national security.
In a TikTok post earlier this week, Chew asked US users to defend their favorite app by sharing "what you love" about the platform with elected representatives.
On Wednesday, a group of around a dozen teenagers, teachers and business owners rallied at the US Capitol to express their opposition to a potential ban.
"Are there other platforms out there? Absolutely -- I'm on them. But none of them have the reach that TikTok has," aspiring soapmaking entrepreneur @countrylather2020 told her 70,000 followers in a video recorded after she arrived in Washington.
A sale, even if all parties agreed, would be very complicated.
The success of the platform is due to its powerful recommendation algorithm, and "separating the algorithm between TikTok and ByteDance is like a Siamese twins operation," analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush told AFP.
TikTok still hopes to appease the authorities.
Chew's testimony will promote the company's elaborate plan -- known as Project Texas -- to satisfy national security concerns in which the handling of US data will be ring-fenced into a US-run division.
He will tell the lawmakers that TikTok has already spent $1.5 billion on the project and hired 1,500 US-based staff to launch it.
Inside TikTok's operation to win over Washington
Washington (AFP) March 23, 2023 - With a giant billboard at Washington's main train station, an army of influencers on Capitol Hill and ad campaigns in the political press, TikTok is pulling out all the stops as it fights for survival in the US capital.
The Chinese-owned video-sharing platform has been on a charm offensive to persuade Washington's political elite it is a boon for millions of Americans -- and not a security threat that needs to be neutralized.
"Hi guys, I'm here outside of Lindsey Graham's office here in the United States Senate," greeting card maker @sparksofjoyco told her 90,000 followers in a video filmed at the door of the Republican senator.
"I'm going to be in contact to tell them the impact that TikTok has on my life and my business and share the concerns that you guys have shared in the comments."
It looked like an innocent enough vignette featuring a TikTok user sufficiently worried by the threat to her favorite app to travel to Washington, although the protest may not have been as spontaneous as it initially appeared.
The influencer had been pictured hours earlier, arm in arm with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew.
The Singaporean executive -- dressed-down in jeans and a hoodie -- has been ubiquitous on his own platform and in traditional media, ahead of his hotly anticipated appearance Thursday before lawmakers.
His mission has been straightforward but daunting: to convince the American political class of his platform's serious efforts at protecting user data.
Lawmakers and government officials of all stripes have fretted that TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance could pass Americans' data to the government in Beijing and are calling for it to be removed from app stores or sold to a US firm.
Supporters argue that the platform is no more prone to data breaches than any other apps that collect personal information -- and that lawmakers should be working to firm up privacy laws rather than spoiling their fun.
- 43 lobbyists -
TikTok itself has for years rejected its characterization as a threat, but tension between Washington and Beijing, exacerbated by the recent destruction of a suspected Chinese spy balloon, have spurred politicians to get tough.
The app -- which recently revealed it has 150 million US users -- is already outlawed on all federal government devices, but lawmakers and President Joe Biden are weighing an all-out nationwide ban.
TikTok has deployed 43 lobbyists, including aging but influential former senators from both parties, to argue its case.
Almost every morning when Washington's movers and shakers wake up to Politico's Playbook newsletter, they encounter a message from TikTok that is designed to allay their fears of Chinese surveillance.
"We're committed to protecting your personal data, while still providing you with the global TikTok experience you love," the company says.
Lobbying is nothing new in the nation's capital, where it is common to encounter influence groups in the corridors of Congress, looking for elected officials to court.
Sarah Bryner, a researcher at OpenSecrets, which tracks corporate lobbying, says advertising in Washington tends to be targeted at political types -- primarily lawmakers and their staffers -- rather than the general public.
For TikTok, this lobbying operation ran to more than $5.3 million in 2022, according to OpenSecrets.
That is more than Twitter spent for the same purpose and, more importantly, 20 times what the video-sharing platform was paying for lobbying campaigns in 2019.
Whether the lavish budgets will change hearts and minds remains to be seen, but the early signs do not bode well.
Opening the hearing for TikTok's boss on Thursday, Republican House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Cathy Rodgers appeared to already have made up her mind.
"Your platform should be banned," she said.
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