The CEO of TikTok will testify alone before Congress in March, an effort to defend the popular app as security concerns continue to mount in the U.S.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee to assuage fears about the app's security and privacy practices and its ties to China through parent company ByteDance.

"We've made our concerns clear with TikTok," the committee's chair, Washington Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, said in a statement. "It is now time to continue the committee's efforts to hold Big Tech accountable by bringing TikTok before the committee to provide complete and honest answers for people."

TikTok has been banned on government-issued devices in more than a dozen states, while several large U.S. universities — including the University of Oklahoma and Auburn University in Alabama — have barred it from their WiFi networks. On Feb. 27, a new law passed late last year will kick in to ban TikTok from all federal government employees' work devices.

TikTok criticized the ban in a statement, arguing that the prohibition was "a political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests."

"ByteDance-owned TikTok has knowingly allowed the ability for the Chinese Communist Party to access American user data," said McMorris Rodgers. "Americans deserve to know how these actions impact their privacy and data security, as well as what actions TikTok is taking to keep our kids safe from online and offline harms."

From Trump to Biden, TikTok – which has more than 100 million U.S. users – has been seeking to assure Washington's leaders that the personal data of U.S. citizens cannot be accessed and its content cannot be manipulated by China's Communist Party or anyone else under Beijing's influence.

The announcement comes as the House Foreign Affairs Committee plans to hold a vote next month on a bill aimed at blocking the use of TikTok in its entirety throughout the U.S., once again citing security concerns.

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