China says TikTok being 'encircled' and 'coerced' after ByteDance drops sale

China's Foreign Ministry on Mondaysaid that popular mobile phone app TikTok is being "encircled" and "coerced" as its parent company ByteDance picked Oracle as partner to try to save its business in the United States.

The ministry's spokesman Wang Wenbin declined to comment on the news, but urged the USgovernment to provide an "open, fair and non-discriminatory international business environment for foreign enterprises".

Oracle beat Microsoft in the battle for the USarm of TikTok with a deal structured as a partnership rather than an outright sale to try to navigate geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington.

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Microsoft on Sunday said its offer to buy TikTok has been rejected. The US tech giant issued a statment saying "ByteDance let us know today they would not be selling TikTok's US operations to Microsoft".

ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese owner, had been in talks to divest the USbusiness of its hugely popular short-video app to Oracleor a consortium led by Microsoft Corpafter USPresident Donald Trump ordered the sale last month and said he might otherwise shut it down.

While TikTok is best known for dancing videos that go viral among teenagers, USofficials are concerned user information could be passed to China's communist government. TikTok, which has as many as 100 million USusers, has said it would never share such data with Chinese authorities.