WSJ News Exclusive | TikTok’s Chief to Testify Before Congress in March

The Harvard-educated Mr. Chew, who once interned at

Meta Platforms Inc.’s

Facebook, agreed to testify voluntarily and will be the sole witness at the hearing, the spokesman said.

The hearing will give lawmakers—particularly Republicans who recently gained a slim majority in the House—an opportunity to explore a range of growing concerns over the app. 

Those include alleged sharing of U.S. users’ data with China, as well as risks that the app could be used for propaganda or manipulation of U.S. users. 

“TikTok has knowingly allowed the ability for the Chinese Communist Party to access American user data,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), who chairs the committee, said in a written statement. “Americans deserve to know how these actions impact their privacy and data security, as well as what actions TikTok is taking to keep our kids safe from online and offline harms.”

Along with other Republican lawmakers, Mrs. Rodgers has demanded more information from TikTok on its impact on young people amid concerns about harmful content and potential sexual exploitation of minors on the platform. Mr. Chew has said recently that TikTok needs to invest more in protecting young people.

TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd., has said that it would never allow interference by the Chinese government. To address U.S. security concerns, the company says it has devised a $1.5 billion plan to ensure the website is independent, including creating a system for monitoring the secret algorithms that determine the content pushed to users. 

The security measures have been the subject of negotiations with a U.S. national-security panel, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., for more than two years. 

The drawn-out talks have triggered criticism from congressional Republicans, who have accused the Biden administration of foot-dragging. They plan to use the Energy and Commerce hearing as well as other committees—including the newly created Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party—to focus on the need to resolve the TikTok issue.

TikTok has been seeking to allay concerns over its vast presence in the U.S., where it has more than 100 million users, and Mr. Chew will have a chance to address Americans directly on the issue at the hearing. 

A Singaporean with experience in the Chinese and American cultures, he has been on something of a public-relations offensive in recent weeks. He paid a high-profile visit to European Commission officials this month to discuss TikTok’s plans to comply with broad new European Union rules. 

That has paralleled the company’s stepped-up efforts to convince U.S. officials that any potential threats raised by TikTok can be addressed through the proposed security measures amid increasing calls for banning the app outright, as former President

Donald Trump

unsuccessfully sought to do.

Lawmakers such as Sen.

Marco Rubio

(R., Fla.) and Reps.

Mike Gallagher

(R., Wis.) and

Raja Krishnamoorthi

(D., Ill.), as well as Sen.

Josh Hawley

(R., Mo.), are among those who have introduced legislation to enact a nationwide ban on TikTok. 

An issue that has arisen with potential bans is finding a way around what are known as the Berman amendments, which provide First Amendment-style protections for informational content from adversarial nations.

Write to John D. McKinnon at [email protected]