This is not the first time China’s TikTok craze has engulfed Washington.
In 2020, former President Donald J. Trump issued an executive order that might force TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell the popular app. But Beijing thwarted a takeover bid from American buyers by restricting technology exports. Last yr, Montana lawmakers introduced a ban on TikTok in the state, but before the law could take effect, it was blocked by a federal judge.
Now US lawmakers are attempting again to force ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, to present up control of the app. On Wednesday, the House passed a bill by a 352-65 vote that might force ByteDance to sell the app or ban it in the United States.
But the fervor has not yet sparked a backlash from China’s leaders or resulted in retaliatory threats against U.S. corporations. Instead, officials in Beijing sharply criticized the bill but largely echoed widespread criticism of U.S. policy as unfair to China.
Experts say there are several reasons for his or her reticence. Despite bipartisan support for the bill in the House of Representatives, its fate in the Senate is uncertain. Trump, the expected GOP presidential nominee, has said he opposes the bill despite his 2020 executive order against TikTok. China has legal tools it may well use to dam any sale.
“China is not ready to immediately pull the trigger and launch full-scale retaliation against what the United States is doing,” said Scott Kennedy, a China specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
TikTok has wide influence in the United States, especially amongst young people. It has an estimated 170 million users in the United States, up from 100 million in 2020. It has an excellent greater global reach, with an estimated one billion users in 140 countries. ByteDance’s Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, had greater than 600 million every day lively users by mid-2020, when it last reported these statistics.
In Washington, lawmakers say Beijing could use TikTok to spread Chinese Communist Party messages or access sensitive data about American TikTok users.
President Biden has said he’ll sign the House bill if it reaches his desk. But Trump’s opposition to the laws signaled to Beijing that it could keep the powder dry.
“Trump’s dissent has calmed the sails of this bill, so Beijing and ByteDance have reason to believe that this problem will eventually go away,” said Kevin Xu, founding father of U.S.-based Interconnected Capital, a hedge fund investing in artificial intelligence technologies.
TikTok says it has taken steps to guard the data and privacy of American users. It proposed an answer of storing US user data on domestic servers controlled by Oracle. But efforts to allay lawmakers’ security concerns have been unsuccessful, leaving “absolutely zero trust between TikTok and Washington at this point,” Xu said.
Despite years of scrutiny, the Chinese company still owns TikTok. And even when lawmakers in Washington conform to force the sale, officials in Beijing have warned in the past that such a deal would require their approval.
In 2020, when the sale of TikTok to US investors including Oracle and Microsoft seemed imminent, the Chinese government asserted its authority over exports it considered sensitive; experts consider these rules involve technology corresponding to the algorithm powering TikTok. This move effectively thwarted attempts to return TikTok to American owners.
Export controls mean China could block sales of the very thing that makes TikTok so addictive – its powerful algorithm that recognizes users’ interests and displays videos to them.
In China, scientists and commentators consider that Beijing is not going to allow ByteDance to sell this technology to a foreign company.
Any sale of TikTok without its core algorithm would depart potential buyers with a much less attractive product, Jin Canrong, a professor of diplomacy at Renmin University in Beijing, said on Chinese social media platform Weibo in post on Thursday, which garnered 184,000 views.
State-controlled media in China disseminated: statement on Thursday by the Department of Foreign Affairs, which cited its treatment of TikTok as evidence of a U.S. “double standard” in protecting free speech. On Chinese social media platforms, that are censored, the push in Washington has sparked outrage over the treatment of Chinese corporations.
This week on Weibo, “TikTok Strikes Back” has change into a trending topic the platform called on its users to mobilize against the House of Representatives bill. Many commentators called the bill a theft and questioned Washington’s commitment to free market competition. They also feared the bill might be a model for Washington to make use of against other Chinese technology corporations.
“Can we really do this kind of business?” asked Shen Yi, a cyberspace management researcher at Fudan University in Shanghai. Washington used the concept of national security like a gun “to the head of any company in any country, saying, ‘sell it or find another company to work with, it’s for your good,'” Shen said.
At a press conference on Friday, Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, demurred when asked about the latest developments which have sparked confusion over TikTok in Washington. “We answered questions about TikTok yesterday,” he said.
Olivia Wang contributed to Hong Kong research.
