According to an internal email from CEO Shou Zi Chew, former high-ranking Disney powerhouse Zenia Mucha has joined the Chinese Communist Party-linked video app TikTok to head communications and branding.
According to the email, Mucha will take on the position of Chief Brand and Communications Officer at TikTok. She previously spent 21 years as Disney’s Chief Communications Officer before retiring in January 2022.
It’s been reported in March that TikTok had recruited Mucha as a consultant to help the firm respond to concerns in the United States over the app’s ties to China and avoid a statewide ban.
According to the internal message, Mucha will be responsible for brand and communications for TikTok. ByteDance, the firm that owns TikTok, is headquartered in Beijing and has its own CCP party committee.
On Friday, in answer to questions from Congress, TikTok revealed in a letter that it stores specific “sensitive data” from American creators in China. According to the corporation, there is a distinction between creator data and “protected user data”; hence it stands by its earlier assertions.
According to Forbes’s study, TikTok stored its founders’ tax documents, social security numbers, and other financial data in China and used ByteDance’s payment facilities.
Chew said in March before the House Energy and Commerce Committee that American data has always been stored in Singapore and Virginia.
According to a lawsuit, a former CEO of ByteDance said that a group of CCP members within the firm had special privileges to access U.S. user data. This featured a “backdoor channel” to receive data on users in the United States and access to a “superuser” or “god credential” to examine all data the firm collected.
In addition to filming in the Uyghur homeland province of Xinjiang for the “Mulan” movie, Disney has collaborated with China on several initiatives, including a $5.5 billion contract to create the Shanghai Disney Resort. Republican senators said in a letter to Disney CEO Bob Iger sent in May, first published by the Washington Free Beacon, that Disney had broken a promise to meet with the relatives of Uyghur genocide victims to discuss the company’s China business.
