Leaked TikTok Org Chart Shows China-Based Execs Run US Shop

Six out of seven TikTok Shop US product category leaders previously worked in China at ByteDance or other companies, according to a leaked org chart viewed by Business Insider. The numbers tell the story of a quiet power shift inside one of America's fastest-growing retail platforms.

TikTok Shop captured about 2% of total US online retail spend in July, up from roughly 1.2% a year earlier, according to Consumer Edge, a customer-intelligence firm that analyzes US credit and debit card transactions. Sales are accelerating. Leadership is consolidating — and it's consolidating around executives with Chinese e-commerce backgrounds.

The operations team answers to Mu Qing, a former e-commerce executive at Douyin, TikTok's Chinese counterpart. Mu, who goes by Mason, reports to Bob Kang, ByteDance's e-commerce lead. The person running TikTok's US Shop creator team previously ran Douyin's creator team, according to the org chart, insider interviews, and a review of executives' verified LinkedIn accounts.

A TikTok spokesperson pushed back on the framing, saying the Shop US leadership team "has remained largely unchanged for more than a year, and the entire organization is focused on helping American businesses of all sizes grow and succeed on the platform."

What changed after the divestiture?

The shift matters because of what ByteDance kept. In January, ByteDance sold a large chunk of TikTok US to an investor consortium to comply with the divestment law, handing the investors oversight of areas like data management. It did not relinquish control of the US e-commerce or advertising businesses.

The reorganization runs beyond Shop's operations team. In 2024, TikTok restructured its global e-commerce governance and experience team, giving executives from China and Singapore greater oversight of new markets including Latin America. In March 2025, it replaced top US advertising leader Blake Chandlee with Will Liu — Liu Xiaobing in China — who worked on monetization products for ByteDance's Chinese apps. In April, North America advertising exec Khartoon Weiss, Chandlee's on-the-ground replacement, left the company.

How did the US-first strategy fail?

TikTok originally tried the opposite approach. In 2023 it went on a hiring spree from Amazon and other US companies, recruiting Nicolas Le Bourgeois, a nine-year Amazon veteran, and Marni Levine, a former Meta and eBay executive, to run US operations. Amazon controls about 35% of US online retail spend, per Consumer Edge's July analysis — poaching its people made strategic sense.

In 2024, ByteDance pushed the US team to replicate Douyin's playbook, launching a companywide livestream commerce training program and asking employees to sell products on camera. Live commerce drives hundreds of billions of dollars annually in China. In the US, EMARKETER forecasts it will drive just under $20 billion in sales this year.

"They wanted 'Live' to be the thing like it is in Asia, but organizationally it was the big push, and then they moved everything back," said one former Shop staffer who worked with partners on live selling and was laid off last year. Top leadership "eventually got smart to this not being something they could brute force," they said.

In early 2025, ByteDance told staffers it was unhappy with TikTok Shop's US performance. Performance reviews, reorgs, and layoffs stripped out most US operations leaders, including Le Bourgeois. In May 2025, the company appointed Patrick Nommensen as "external ambassador to represent US TikTok Shop in external engagements," per a memo sent by Mu — the local face of a business run from elsewhere.

Does Chinese leadership help or hurt?

Both, insiders say. Executives brought seller and agency relationships from China that boosted US sales — many of Shop's foreign sellers are China-based, often through US entities. But the changing of the guard has produced strategy missteps.

Earlier this year, TikTok told all US merchants to switch to its in-house fulfillment and shipping program by end of March, paying TikTok's service fee. Sellers threatened to leave, a Shop agency partner said. The company scrapped the policy in February.

"Leadership from China is used to consumers or sellers adjusting quickly, but in the US, customers have alternatives, and if they don't like an experience they will not usually stick around," said a former Shop staffer who worked on TikTok's shipping strategy.

Z. John Zhang, a Wharton professor and founding director of its China Center, said the pattern is textbook: companies expanding abroad "have to bring your own people in to implement whatever is working in your own home country" — but those leaders often import assumptions that cause strategic mistakes.

The company cites results. A PF Global survey it commissioned in May and June found 85% of businesses using TikTok Shop said it increased sales and revenue, and 81% said it helped them reach customers they couldn't access elsewhere. In December, TikTok said Shop crossed $500 million in US sales across the four-day Black Friday-to-Cyber Monday stretch.

Internally, three insiders said elements of "996 work culture" — 12-hour days plus weekends — have ramped up in US e-commerce hubs like Seattle. "There's people who are hungrier, used to the long hours, more prepared for the chaos of moving quickly," a current Shop staffer said. "That's something that I battle with."

Shop is growing and grabbing share. The open question is whether a leadership bench with few US e-commerce veterans can keep flagging the missteps before sellers find those alternatives.