MOSCOW, August 8. /TASS/. The United States’ actions against the TikTok social media platform are a blatant example of unfair competition, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday.

"We view America’s unreasonably tough restrictive actions against one of the biggest social networks, TikTok, as a violation of a wide range of Washington’s obligations to ensure free and wide dissemination of all forms of information, free choice of its sources and encouragement of cooperation in this area," she said. "The ban for American citizens to cooperate with the Chinese company ByteDance, which owns TikTok, based on unsubstantiated accusations" within the framework of aggressive coercion to sell that social media platform to American corporations is another egregious example of unfair competition in the struggle for dominance in the international information space."

The diplomat stressed that Washington’s actions were out of sync with the basic principles of the market economy and violated the norms of the World Trade Organization. "The attempt by the Washington establishment to justify such an unceremonious arm-twisting in order to absorb its Chinese competitor by the need to ensure national security looks especially cynical," Zakharova went on to say.

She called on the United States to "reconsider its methods of struggle to maintain the monopoly of US IT giants in the international segment of social networks and bring them in line with generally accepted democratic values and international legal standards." "We expect specialized international agencies and human rights organizations to react in a proper manner and give an impartial assessment of these actions," the diplomat concluded.

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump signed two executive orders banning any transactions with TikTok owner ByteDance and its subsidiaries and transactions involving the WeChat app with its owner, Chinese Internet giant Tencent, and its subsidiaries.