Here are the top executives of ByteDance: * Zhang Yiming, founder / CEO of ByteDance until 2021: not a member of the Communist Party. * Kevin A. Mayer, COO an

Here are the top executives of ByteDance: * Zhang Yiming, founder / CEO of ByteDance until 2021: not a member of the Communist Party. * Kevin A. Mayer, COO and CEO of TikTok during 2020: not a member of the Communist Party. * Rubo Liang, CEO since 2021: not a member of the Communist Party. * Lidong Zhang, Chairman of ByteDance China: I can't find any reference to him being a member of the Communist Party. * Alex Zhu, founder of Musical.ly, the predecessor of TikTok, and former CEO of TikTok: not a member of the Communist Party. I'm sure there are some executives that are members of the Communist Party, but looking at the top people, that just doesn't pop out. > The ongoing controversy with TikTok has always been about the concern of the government of China using TikTok data and manipulation of its content in clandestine ways. That's the way literally every issue even tangentially related to China is spun in the US nowadays. This is actually a story about a tech company trying to find leakers by looking at the user data of the journalists they met with. It gets turned into a story about how the Communist Party is going to infiltrate and undermine the United States, using an app that teenagers use to show off their dance moves. The paranoia about China has gone just a bit too far for my liking.