TikTok announces it will leave the Hong Kong market within days

By Echo Wang

NEW YORK (Reuters) – TikTok will exit the Hong Kong market within days, a spokesman told Reuters late on Monday, as other technology companies including Facebook Inc stop processing government requests for user data in the region.

The short video app from China-based ByteDance has decided to leave the region after China enacted a sweeping new national security law for the semi-autonomous city.

“In light of recent events, we have decided to cease operations of the TikTok app in Hong Kong,” a TikTok spokesperson said in response to a Reuters question about its involvement in the market.

The company, which is now owned by the former Walt Disney Co. manager Kevin Mayer, has stated in the past that the app's user data is not stored in China.

TikTok has also previously stated that it will not comply with any requests from the Chinese government to censor content or access TikTok user data, and that the company has never been asked to do so.

The Hong Kong region is a small, loss-making market for the company, a source familiar with the matter said. Last August, TikTok reported that it had attracted 150,000 users in Hong Kong.

According to analytics firm Sensor Tower, TikTok was downloaded more than 2 billion times worldwide through Apple’s app stores in the first quarter of this year. and Google downloaded.

According to the source, this move was made because it is not clear whether Hong Kong is now fully subject to Beijing's jurisdiction due to the new law.

TikTok was designed to be inaccessible from mainland China, part of a strategy to appeal to a more global audience. The equivalent in mainland China is called Douyin.

A ByteDance spokesperson said there are currently no plans to launch Douyin in the Hong Kong market.

Although Douyin is not available in overseas app stores, it has more users than TikTok in Hong Kong, according to a second source familiar with the situation. Users from mainland China can download the app while in the mainland or by switching their accounts.

“Douyin has many users in Hong Kong and will continue to serve users there,” said Zhang Nan, CEO of ByteDance China, in a statement.

Fang Kecheng, assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said TikTok's move highlights the dilemma Chinese companies face in internationalizing, adding that the move was “inevitable.”

“You have to follow local guidelines and try not to offend the Chinese government and the public. ByteDance's spin-off of TikTok (from Douyin) was the same strategy.”

(Additional reporting by Yingzhi Yang in Beijing and Pei Li in Hong Kong; Editing by Kenneth Li and Jacqueline Wong)