He also alleged that the committee members were not ByteDance employees but were physically present at the company’s offices in Beijing.
This was common knowledge among senior executives, said Mr Yu, who for around a year from August 2017 was a head of engineering in the US for ByteDance.
The filing also alleged that in 2018 the CCP committee members used their “god credential” to “identify and locate the Hong Kong protesters, civil rights activists, and supporters of the protests”.
Hong Kong saw huge protests in 2014 – the so-called Umbrella movement – where people demanded the right to elect their own leader. After that, there were smaller demonstrations by civil rights activists. Much of this visible dissent has disappeared since Beijing cracked down with a draconian national security law after the anti-government 2019 protests.
When contacted by the BBC, a ByteDance spokesperson strongly denied the allegations: “We plan to vigorously oppose what we believe are baseless claims and allegations in this complaint.”
