EXCLUSIVE: Documents And Recordings Reveal How TikTok Forced Staff To Swear Oaths To Uphold China’s ‘Socialist System’
TikTok required an American executive to sign an oath supporting China’s “socialist system” and “national interests,” according to documents related to an employment discrimination lawsuit obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Former TikTok marketing executive Katie Puris alleged she was forced to sign an agreement with the tech giant’s China-based sister company, Douyin, swearing not to divulge “state secrets,” disrupt “national honor” or undermine “ethnic unity,” according to documents obtained by the DCNF. In the spring of 2024, Puris accused her employer as well as its Chinese parent company ByteDance, and ByteDance’s subsidiary Douyin, of gender and age-based discrimination in a lawsuit that also alleges TikTok’s day-to-day operations are controlled by ByteDance.
The Supreme Court may rule this week on a lawsuit brought by TikTok challenging the constitutionality of legislation President Joe Biden signed into law that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok on Jan. 19, 2025 or face an outright ban in the U.S. At the same time, President-elect Donald Trump filed a brief with the Supreme Court in December 2024, requesting for the justices to halt the looming ban to allow his administration to resolve the dispute through “political means.”
“If proven, these allegations reinforce that TikTok’s supposed independence is a fraud, and that [Chinese Communist Party (CCP)]-controlled ByteDance directly manages TikTok’s internal functions from China,” Michigan Republican Rep. John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP, told the DCNF. “It is critical for our national security that the Chinese Communist Party’s control over TikTok be eliminated. President Trump is the perfect leader to make that happen by forcing divestment and delivering the deal of the century.”
TikTok declined to comment on Puris’ lawsuit.
“We can’t comment on falsehoods that have been presented to advance political agendas,” a TikTok spokesperson told the DCNF.
Abiding By ‘The Socialist System’
Puris, TikTok’s former head of global brand and creative, alleged in her lawsuit that TikTok executives are required to sign an agreement with ByteDance subsidiary Douyin that polices speech and demands compliance with China’s socialist system.
After joining TikTok in December 2019, Puris was required to sign a user agreement with Douyin’s “Feishu Employee Stock Ownership Plan” to access “information concerning her equity grants,” according to the lawsuit.
“You shall comply with applicable laws and guidelines and abide by public order and good customs, the socialist system, national interests, legal rights of other citizens, and information authenticity requirements,” the purported Douyin agreement reviewed by the DCNF states.
The document also lists a number of prohibited activities for employees, including “overthrowing the socialist system,” “inciting secession,” “undermining national religious policies, or promoting cults and superstitions,” as well as injunctions against “meaningless information or deliberate use of character combinations to avoid technical censorship.”
‘Dual Reporting Structure’
TikTok executives also sign agreements with ByteDance consenting to digital surveillance and report to China-based leadership, according to other documents and audio recordings supporting Puris’ lawsuit.
One confidentiality agreement “For New York Employees” that ByteDance allegedly required Puris to sign apparently allowed the company to inspect TikTok executives’ personal electronic devices.
“Employee agrees [to] allow the Employer to inspect any electronic device in Employee’s possession or under Employee’s control which is or was used by Employee in the course of Employee’s employment in order for the Employer to satisfy itself of Employee’s compliance with the terms of this [non-disclosure obligations],” reads the alleged ByteDance agreement.
Other documents also seem to indicate TikTok ultimately considered Puris to be a ByteDance employee.
While onboarding in 2019, Puris was allegedly required to sign one hiring document reviewed by the DCNF affirming: “I am a director, executive officer or general partner of ByteDance LTD.”
Puris’ complaint also details how she and other TikTok executives reported to the Chinese parent company.
After being hired, Puris was allegedly told about TikTok’s “dual reporting structure,” which required her to report to one Beijing-based executive working for ByteDance and Douyin as well as another U.S.-based president of global business solutions at TikTok, according to the complaint.
Yet, Puris’ “performance reviews and compensation” were allegedly controlled by the chairman of ByteDance’s China region, her complaint states.
TikTok’s president of global business solutions seemingly acknowledged the company’s unorthodox corporate structure during a 2021 phone call with Puris, according to a recording reviewed by the DCNF.
“We still report into Beijing,” the president said at one point during the call after Puris asked about the future of TikTok’s global brand.
“From my perspective, the critical issue is not where TikTok’s user data is stored,” Puris told the DCNF through her attorney. “Rather, it is whether ByteDance retains ultimate control over TikTok’s employees and executives, and based on my experience at TikTok, that is the case.”
Communist Party Control
“These new materials, recently provided to the Select Committee by a whistleblower, should be shared with the public and appear to reinforce what we already know,” Illinois Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi told the DCNF. “The CCP controls ByteDance, and ByteDance and TikTok are one and the same. Full stop.”
First proposed in March 2024, Biden’s legislation now being reviewed by the Supreme Court identifies ByteDance, its subsidiaries and affiliates as “foreign adversary controlled applications” posing a threat to U.S. national security. TikTok denies the allegations and its lawsuit argues the legislation is inconsistent with the “First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of expression.”
TikTok’s ties to ByteDance first came under scrutiny as early as October 2019, when Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio sent a letter to the Treasury Department requesting for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to review the national security implications of TikTok’s acquisition of a Musical.ly, a video-sharing platform, alleging that the Chinese companies censored content “deemed sensitive by the Chinese government and Communist Party.”
In March 2023, TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, testified at a hearing convened by the House Energy and Commerce Committee concerning his company’s alleged surveillance of American users, during which he denied TikTok shares U.S. user information with the Chinese government or censors content on their behalf, such as posts related to China’s ongoing genocide against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities.
However, when TikTok subsequently responded to the committee’s follow-up questions in May 2023, it acknowledged it had accessed, or attempted to access, the user data of Emily Baker White, a Forbes journalist covering TikTok for the publication. Similarly, while TikTok has sought to assuage national security concerns by claiming it relocated all American user data to servers hosted by Texas-based technology company Oracle, TikTok was later forced to acknowledge it still stores some American user data in China.
Multiple high-ranking current and former ByteDance and TikTok employees have also come forward alleging that TikTok tracks users’ private connections and has exploited backdoor tools to help the Chinese government target civil rights activists, according to a series of media reports.
The DCNF also discovered that at least one ByteDance board member, Fred Hu, has extensive Chinese government ties, including holding membership in organizations serving a CCP intelligence service called the United Front Work Department.
“TikTok and its most vociferous defenders insist that the litigation at the Supreme Court is about free speech. It isn’t,” Michael Sobolik, Hudson Institute senior fellow, told the DCNF. “It’s about national security threats that emanate from ByteDance’s control of TikTok. These revelations are the latest evidence that TikTok is a vessel of its CCP-controlled parent company.”
AUTHOR
Philip Lenczycki
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