Through testimony spanning multiple hearings, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew (周受资 - first name Shou Zi, last name Chew/Zhou) has had a phenomenal stage from which to make his personal case for why TikTok should not be divested. Unfortunately, Chew continues to be belligerent, evasive, and insincere.
Shou Zi Chew
Chew clearly lied under oath, implying that Beijing-based ByteDance (TikTok’s parent) was barred from accessing TikTok data. This was never true, as ByteDance employees have accessed US persons' data, including US journalists. More claims have been put forward in court, suggesting that TikTok itself is host to a CCP committee (these claims are continuing to play out).
ByteDance hosts an internal CCP committee and retains a commanding role in its relationship with subsidiary TikTok. This includes transferring ByteDance executives to take charge of TikTok as well as accessing whatever US user data ByteDance or the CCP desires, even to the present time.
None of the above would be surprising if Chew’s public background was simply more widely known. Virtually all of Chew’s business career has been in service to firms deeply connected to either Russian oligarchs or Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials.
While being interviewed, Chew is alert to scrub these areas of his personal history. From a Wired interview in December 2023 and accompanying February 2024 article:
[Wired Interviewer] I think the world doesn’t know much about you as a person. So let’s leave TikTok alone. Who is Shou Zi Chew?
[Chew] “Oh, who am I? I grew up in Singapore. I was born there, my great-grandfather moved there many years ago. I had a typical Singaporean childhood. I wanted to see the world, because Singapore is fantastic, but it’s tiny. So I went to the UK for college. I joined Goldman Sachs, worked there for a couple of years, met an internet entrepreneur who started an investment company to invest in Facebook. So I joined him, and through that I met the guy who founded ByteDance. And in his earliest iteration, the idea was so simple, but so powerful. So I met him in 2012, and …” [Chew derails the questions about his background by inviting taco delivery to the interview table, then the topic is changed to video games].
Chew certainly did not have a typical Singaporean childhood. He attended the elite Hwa Chong Institution (华侨中学), a feeder for Oxford and Cambridge. The school has long focused on inculcating cultural ties to mainland China, and has recently opened its first overseas campuses in both Beijing and Xi’an.
After working at Goldman Sachs London, the “unnamed internet entrepreneur” Chew happened to link up with was actually Yuri Milner, a Russian tech investor. Milner got his start only with massive cash injections from Alisher Usmanov, a Russian-Uzbek oligarch who took a 35% stake in Milner’s investment firm, Digital Sky Technologies (DST). Chew worked at DST directly for Milner.
Usmanov with Putin, 2018
DST funneled millions of dollars into Russia’s tech sector throughout the 2000’s and 2010’s. Milner followed the strange strategy of investing in most major Russian tech companies, even competing ones. In 2009, DST’s cofounder Grigory Finger claimed that “if an industry [in Russia] is in the early stage with no obvious leaders, we want to sponsor all potential leaders.” DST’s efforts spawned the major Russian platforms VK, My World@Mail.Ru / MoiMir, and OK.ru / Odnoklassniki (among others).
Since the invasion of Ukraine, Usmanov has been individually targeted by the US, UK, and the EU for personal sanctions, including travel bans and asset seizures. These measures were taken against Usmanov for his role as a Russian oligarch with a very close relationship with Vladimir Putin. Milner has sought to distance himself from Usmanov for years, and often attempts to downplay any ties to the Kremlin.
After kick-starting the Russian tech sector, Milner’s DST then began heavy investments into Chinese tech firms. DST’s portfolio (while Chew was with DST post-2010) includes substantial stakes in companies very familiar to our readers, including Alibaba, JD.Com, Xiaomi, and Didi Dache. It was through working on these deals funding Chinese tech startups that Chew was offered a role at Xiaomi, a Chinese phone manufacturer.
Yuri Milner at an event with Lei Jun of Xiaomi in 2012, discussing “China’s answer to Apple”
Xiaomi is the second-largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world, and was founded in 2010 by Lei Jun. Within only 20 months of Xiaomi becoming a company, Yuri Milner made a large personal investment. Later on in 2014, DST would also take part in a $1.1b round of funding for Xiaomi. From any perspective, Milner has been integral to Xiaomi’s growth.
In line with guidance from Beijing, Xiaomi would establish its first CCP Committee on 19 June, 2015. Just weeks later, Chew jumped ship from DST and became CFO of Xiaomi on 1 July, 2015. This may seem benign enough as many companies in China are host to CCP committees (including Ford, which has a joint venture with a subsidiary of one of China’s largest weapons manufacturers), but what was the level of CCP involvement in Chew’s appointment?
Shou Zi Chew (left), then CFO of Xiaomi with Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi in 2018. PHOTO: BOBBY YIP/REUTERS
There is no way to know for certain, but we do know that CCP committees within private Chinese firms fulfill a leadership function by controlling high level appointments (CFO being one of these). In order to qualify for appointment, executives need to be vetted by the CCP committee. This usually involves either direct CCP membership, or executives need to be non-party delegates to the National People’s Congress (NPC) or the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress (CPPCC).
While party membership is not explicitly required for the above organizations, admittance is tightly controlled by the CCP. It is almost certain that Chew had to go through a CCP approval process or at least have his assignment blessed off on before his appointment as Xiaomi CFO.
“First party member representatives assembly of the Xiaomi Chinese Communist Party.” Zhang Jianhui via Weibo.
In 2021, Chew moved from one CCP-controlled company (Xiaomi) to another: ByteDance. In the above interview, Chew casually mentions that through DST, he met the founder of ByteDance/Douyin, the Chinese parent of TikTok. By this, he most likely means Zhang Yiming, the same individual who in 2018 would apologize to the CCP for content “deviating from socialist core values” (...产品走错了路,出现了与社会主义核心价值观不符的内容... ) as well as apologizing for “a lack of ideological attention” (...思想上缺乏重视。). Zhang went on to admit that “technology must be guided by the socialist core values” (...技术必须要用社会主义核心价值观来引导...).
Zhang followed up by pledging to:
“Strengthen party (CCP) building and education on socialist core values” within his companies. (1、加强党建工作,对全体员工进行“四个意识”、社会主义核心价值观、舆论导向、法律法规等教育,真正履行好企业的社会责任。)
“Ensure that the authoritative voice (a euphemism for the CCP) is powerfully propagated” (...保证权威声音有力传播。)
Around the same time that Chew joined ByteDance, the Cybersecurity Administration of China (CAC), a “merged institution” under the leadership of the CCP, took a 1% stake in ByteDance via an investment in Douyin Information Service Co., Ltd, a ByteDance subsidiary.
While seemingly small, this investment gives the CCP control over platform content, direct authority over ByteDance algorithms (including the TikTok algorithm), and, just like the CCP committees, control over high level appointments within the firm (CFO being one of these). Chew has an uncanny knack for being appointed to high level roles within firms that simultaneously experience large waves of CCP support. After a very short stint as ByteDance CFO, Chew was put in charge of TikTok.
The CAC website graciously illustrates its direct affiliation with the CCP. The CAC was also a major investor in Kingsoft Cloud, a software company taken public by Lei Jun, Chew’s old boss. Interestingly enough, one of Kingsoft’s major products, Cheetah Mobile, was banned by Google for habitual fraud and malicious data harvesting.
Congressional shenanigans aside, Chew is the prepackaged front man for some of the bloodiest authoritarian regimes on planet earth. It is his relationships with Yuri Milner, Alisher Usmanov, Lei Jun, and Zhang Yiming that have done the most to move his career forward. The above group of more obviously compromised individuals report directly to the whims of Russian Federation officials and Chinese Communist Party members.
The idea that Shou Zi Chew should be taken seriously is an affront to American national interest. His best friends are America’s worst enemies working against Washington’s interests.