Does the Chinese government own a small percentage of ByteDance?

No. As is required under local law, in order to operate certain ByteDance news and information products that are offered exclusively in China, three entities affiliated with the Chinese government collectively own 1% of a ByteDance subsidiary that holds media licenses for those services. TikTok, which is not available in China, is not among them. This entity has no ownership, visibility, or input into ByteDance’s global operations, including TikTok. Employees of this entity are restricted from access to U.S. user databases, with no exceptions. These databases are scanned daily and monitored for access to every data field.