In response to allegations made by American lawmakers about the popular video app TikTok, which has become the centre of a growing economic, technological, and political dispute between Beijing and Washington, China denied trying to force companies to gather information internationally on behalf of the government on Friday.

China "has never" and "will not," according to Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, ask businesses or individuals to gather information kept in other countries in a manner that is against their legal systems.

The chief executive of TikTok, Shou Chew, was interrogated by US legislators about the app's connections to its Chinese parent firm, ByteDance, and its potential use as a monitoring tool by the Chinese government during a contentious, five-hour congressional session the day before.

China's response to the hearing demonstrated how TikTok, which has around 150 million users in the US, has turned into a flashpoint in the geopolitical battle between the two biggest economies in the world. The Biden administration recently demanded that the Chinese owners of the app sell it or risk having it banned in the United States; but, hours before Mr. Chew's hearing on Thursday, China's Ministry of Commerce announced it would reject a forced sale of the program.

Recently, the White House gave its support to a bipartisan Senate measure that would provide the Commerce Department the authority to outlaw any app that jeopardised the security of Americans, giving prospective limits on TikTok a stronger legal foundation.

•  Also read TikTok is prohibited by the UK Parliament because to security concerns

U.S. legislators and authorities are concerned that China may try to force TikTok to pass over private information about American users or change the app's recommendation engine to promote its own political agenda. They cite the extensive legal framework in China, which obliges people and businesses to assist with public security inquiries and intelligence gathering.

Lawmakers pressed Mr. Chew on ByteDance's admission that staff members had acquired the data of US users, such as two American journalists, time and time again during the hearing on Thursday.

Once a Chinese monitoring balloon was seen floating above US soil in February, tensions between both the superpowers grew. TikTok was recently referred to by a Republican congressman as a "spy balloon in your phone."

Lokman Tsui, a fellow just at Citizen Laboratory at the University of Toronto and a specialist on Chinese censorship, characterised China's assertion that the government would never ask businesses to spy for it "similar to their reasoning that they don't control the internet" and branded it "preposterous and absurd."

36 Hours in Johannesburg, Selected by the Editors

The Real Story Behind the Favorite Stress Hormone on the Internet

Mr. Pickles, a 90-year-old tortoise, has three children and is a new father.

•  Also read TikTok CEO was interrogated for more than five hours on China, drugs, and teen mental health.

He noted that because of China's stringent internet censorship rules, businesses, including TikTok's local competitor Douyin, are required to monitor their users.

The Chinese government ordered Yahoo in the early 2000s to turn over the mails of a Chinese writer who had been convicted and given a 10-year jail term. Chinese laws also forbade several American digital firms, such as Google as well as Facebook, from completely functioning in the Chinese market, a move that sparked accusations about unfair business tactics.

China responded to such criticism in the opposite way during the briefing on Friday.

According to Ms. Mao of the Foreign Ministry, the US government has to "stop unfairly oppressing foreign enterprises" like TikTok. She went on to say that it need to "respect the modern economy and the notion of fair competition."