President Joe Biden moved a step closer to banning TikTok in the US after the Senate passed a new law ordering its Chinese owner to sell the app or face it being blocked.

The bill passed in a landslide vote, with 79 senators in favour and 18 against, leaving it to the White House to sign off the proposed block. Mr Biden has already said he will wave through the bill.

The law effectively orders Bytedance, TikTok’s China-headquartered owner, to divest the popular music video app, or have it blocked from smartphone app stores offered by Apple and Google, as well as other web services. 

The passage of the new bill, which sailed through Congress by 360 votes to 58, follows years of calls from China hawks for a US crackdown on TikTok over national security fears and concerns for American data.

Donald Trump attempted to outlaw the app in 2020, but the effort was bogged down in US courts before he was defeated in the US presidential election.

Mr Biden largely dropped his presidential rival’s crusade against TikTok, however US politicians in Congress and the Senate eventually put on a united front to push through the current bill.

Marco Rubio, the veteran Republican senator, said Chinese ownership of TikTok had been “dangerously shortsighted” amid rising tensions with China in a technological Cold War. “This is a good move for America,” he said.