Leaked TikTok org chart shows China-based execs run US Shop

Six of TikTok Shop's seven US product category leaders previously worked in China at ByteDance or other companies, according to a leaked org chart viewed by Business Insider. The shift followed a mandatory fulfillment policy announced earlier this year that the company scrapped in February after seller backlash.

The abandoned policy would have required all US merchants to move to TikTok Shop's in-house fulfillment and shipping program by the end of March, paying TikTok's service fee. Some sellers threatened to leave the platform, a Shop agency partner said. Company insiders told Business Insider the episode illustrates a deeper change: TikTok has elevated executives with Chinese e-commerce backgrounds, many now US-based, while shedding American e-commerce leaders through layoffs or voluntary exits.

Who actually runs TikTok Shop US?

Operations are overseen by Mu Qing, a former Douyin e-commerce executive who goes by Mason and reports to ByteDance e-commerce lead Bob Kang. The person running TikTok's US Shop creator team previously ran Douyin's creator team.

A TikTok spokesperson pushed back, 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." The company pointed to a PF Global survey it commissioned in May and June, which found 85% of businesses using TikTok Shop reported increased sales and revenue, and 81% said it helped them reach customers they could not access elsewhere.

What does the leadership change mean for sellers?

TikTok Shop captured about 2% of total US online retail spend in July, up from about 1.2% a year earlier, according to Consumer Edge, a firm analyzing US card transactions. For scale, Amazon controls roughly 35% of that spend. TikTok said it crossed $500 million in US product sales during the four-day Black Friday to Cyber Monday stretch in December.

Chinese-market connections have helped revenue. Executives brought seller and agency relationships from China, and many of Shop's foreign sellers are based there despite US entities. But insiders say fewer leaders with US e-commerce experience means fewer people to flag local issues. "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," one former Shop staffer who worked on shipping strategy said.

How did the US team get here?

TikTok Shop was not always built this way. In 2023, it hired heavily from Amazon and other US companies, recruiting nine-year Amazon veteran Nicolas Le Bourgeois and former Meta and eBay executive Marni Levine. In 2024, ByteDance pushed US teams to replicate Douyin strategies, running 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 but is forecast at just under $20 billion in US sales this year, per EMARKETER.

"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," a former Shop staffer laid off last year said. Top leadership "eventually got smart to this not being something they could brute force."

In early 2025, ByteDance leadership told staffers it was unhappy with US performance. Performance review cycles, reorgs and layoffs removed many 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 changes extended beyond e-commerce: in March 2025, TikTok replaced top US ad leader Blake Chandlee with Will Liu, an executive from ByteDance's Chinese monetization products. North America ad exec Khartoon Weiss left in April.

Why does control matter after the divestment?

ByteDance sold a large chunk of TikTok US to an investor consortium in January to comply with the divestment law, transferring oversight of areas such as data management. It did not relinquish control of US e-commerce or advertising. Wharton professor Z. John Zhang notes international firms typically "hold onto the more technical and sophisticated jobs for your own home country and executives," which can produce strategic mistakes when home-market assumptions are applied abroad. Three insiders also said elements of "996 work culture" — 12-hour days plus weekends — have intensified in US e-commerce hubs like Seattle.

With Shop's US market share still climbing, the open question is whether centralized, China-trained leadership can keep scaling an American business whose consumers, as one former staffer put it, will simply walk away from a bad experience.