The proposal by U.S. policymakers to impose a ban on TikTok for government personnel is an attempt to prevent the popular video-sharing platform owned by Chinese technology giant ByteDance from growing into a transnational product, said an expert on Thursday, terming it a geopolitical move against China.

Hong Yu, director of the Institute of Communications Research at Zhejiang University, said the "evidence" presented against TikTok pertaining to security concerns is "totally speculative" and "indirect".

"So I think the security concern argument is really just a cover. The ultimate purpose is to make a geopolitical measurement to prevent TikTok from becoming a transnational platform. To prevent China from building communication power," said Hong. 

A U.S. Senate committee overseeing homeland security unanimously approved a proposal on Wednesday to ban the use of TikTok on government-issued devices. However, it has yet to be passed by the full senate to become law.

The video-sharing platform has been accused of "spying" by the president of the United States, and it has also been censured in India and by former Tory leader and parliamentarian Iain Duncan Smith in the UK. 

ByteDance has repeatedly denied accusations that it harvests data for the Chinese government. It has said it stores Americans' data in the U.S. and Singapore, not in China.

On why TikTok has been the subject of such accusations, Hong argued that it was mostly due to its corporate identity seen as a Chinese company. 

"So from the right-wing U.S. politicians' perspective, if TikTok can collect user information, then it can transfer that information to Beijing, to the Chinese government, so as to enhance Beijing's surveillance capacity. So that's the accusation that the Trump administration has been making," she said.

Hong added that the other reason is probably that TikTok was one of the first social media platforms that succeeded in entering the U.S. mainstream market. 

"So what the United States wants to do is really to prevent TikTok from becoming too big, too strong, too soon. What they worry is that TikTok can become a vehicle for Chinese influence over U.S. norms and values, and ideologies."

"So yes, there are many fronts where TikTok may have provided grounds of accusations, but most of the accusations are hypothetical, and even speculative," she said.

Hong also said that security concerns are common to all internet applications. 

"Let's not forget that it was Facebook that allowed Cambridge Analytica to harvest tons of information from its millions of users. And also Edward Snowden's revelation made us realize that the U.S. government has the capacity and willingness to monitor governments around the world, and also populations."

Hong also said that TikTok was a reflection of the shifting power on the internet, where in the past, the U.S. promoted the idea of a single internet, but now there seems to be a shift globally.

"As the internet travels in different regions, it is bound to be different. Because people have different values, practices and norms. So there's no such thing as a single internet, outside of the reach of governments, market forces." 

TikTok has become a sensation globally, mostly among teenagers and young adults in the U.S., though it is known as Douyin in China and runs on an entirely separate ecosystem.