China will fight tooth and nail if Chinese company ByteDance is forced to sell its widely used app TikTok. The Commerce Department in Beijing said this shortly before a US congressional hearing with TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew.

The TikTok executive will say in his statement, the text of which has already been released, that ByteDance is “not an agent of China or any other country”, that it has never shared data from US users with China and that China is also there never asked for.

According to Beijing, a sale of TikTok would amount to exporting technology. China must permit for this, according to the ministry. A forced sale, the department said, would “damage the confidence of investors from all countries, including China, to invest in the United States.”

The United States is the largest market where TikTok is available. In China, ByteDance has another app called Douyin, and India has banned TikTok.