And yes! TikTok is how we break the shackles of big tech. TikTok on its own we can handle. But a Facebook backed by the full force of the US military surveillance industrial complex. That is going to kill off the whole planet.
You don't actually have a problem with big tech or surveillance, you have a problem with the US.
The same has not been proved for China. There have only been accusations by the US government, followed by an absolute reluctance and failure to provide any proof whatsoever.
The US accuses China of being a bad actor engaging in data surveillance, refuses to back up accusations, and then commits the very same act themselves. The very definition of dishonesty and hypocrisy.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/ac...
TikTok almost certainly receives requests from various governments to collect data no differently from Facebook/Google/Verizon etc..
I think it's not a question of if China is doing this as well; certainly they are. No politician is going to publicly say though, "Look we know China is collecting data on you from TikTok because, uh duh, that's what we do with all of your US based social media posts."
I also don't think our government is all that directly concerned that China is monitoring. I think the concern is more on how the data and the outside control of the platform might be used to influence public opinions. Election tampering and the like.
Similarly, the PSBs in some cities have used social media contacts as a means of working out which foreign English teachers to do impromptu drug testing on.
So this is as 'big brother' as it gets.
Edit:
"Government “golden shares”, tiny investments that give a high degree of control over companies, have been rumoured for years; only recently have they been disclosed in the likes of Weibo and ByteDance." [1]
"In April 2021, a state-owned enterprise owned by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the China Internet Investment Fund, took a partial ownership stake in ByteDance's main Chinese entity and placed a government official, Wu Shugang, on its board of directors" [2]
"ByteDance's China business has a strategic partnership with the Chinese Ministry of Public Security for the ministry's public relations efforts.[ In 2019, ByteDance formed joint ventures with Beijing Time, a publisher controlled by the Beijing municipal CCP committee"
"Yiming issued a letter stating that the app was "incommensurate with socialist core values" and promised that ByteDance would "further deepen cooperation" with the authorities to promote their policies.Following the shutdown, ByteDance announced that it would give preference to Chinese Communist Party members in its hiring and increase its censors from 6,000 to 10,000 employees."
"In April 2022, ByteDance announced that it would report users' content on Toutiao and Douyin that engaged in "historical nihilism" in contradiction of official CCP history"
... the list goes on ...
[1] https://www.economist.com/business/chinas-communist-authorit...