China denies illegally storing personal data after new EU investigation into TikTok
The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman assured that Beijing "has never and will never require companies or individuals to illegally collect or store data."
A screen with the logo of social networking platform TikTok and the EU flag.
China denied Friday that it illegally stores personal data on servers on its territory, after the European Union opened an investigation into TikTok.
"The Chinese government attaches great importance to the confidentiality and security of data and protects it in accordance with the law," said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning.
The spokeswoman assured that Beijing "has never and will never require companies or individuals to illegally collect or store data."
The Irish Data Protection Authority, acting on behalf of the European Union, on Thursday opened an investigation against TikTok for storing personal data of European users on Chinese servers.
The video platform, which has 1.5 billion members, is owned by Chinese group ByteDance.
TikTok has for years been in the crosshairs of Western governments, which fear its links to Beijing and the possible use of its users' data for espionage or propaganda purposes.
Irish authorities already fined TikTok €530 million (about $620 million) in May for failing to ensure sufficient protection of Europeans' personal data, which can be accessed remotely from China but is stored outside the country.
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