It's going to be very difficult to find a buyer
willing to shell out that much money in the US
for something which is such a political hot potato there.
And that's before even China gets involved with a potential
if there is a buyer
ban on the sale because
TikTok to their eyes contains technology that they would put
under an export ban.
So what's left as a as a choice?
Well, the courts. And that's absolutely what Beijing is throwing
its weight behind.
We've seen that with with Blinken's latest visit,
they'll be talking about this as a part of a
number of things
behind the scenes. Now, why is Beijing really
against this, this decision by the United States?
It depends who you ask.
If you go to China,
TikTok is seen as a beacon of Chinese technological prowess
around the world.
Of course, if you ask
any US lawmaker, the vast majority are going to tell
you,
well, China wants Tiktok to remain in the US because
it uses it for espionage and for propaganda.
Now these are this. The public hasn't seen masses of
evidence for this,
but we do know that Tiktok,
whose parent company is Bike Dance and is operated in
China,
is subject to Chinese laws stipulating that it's data may
be used to for national security purposes by the authorities
should they choose to.
So in any case, no other Chinese exports to my
eyes has as much exposure to so many young people
in the West using it every day.
And even if it's not of great strategic value today,
it might be in the future were a conflict between
the US and China to to appear.
And there's been a precedent to this
as well, hasn't there? The Chinese owners of dating app
Grinder were forced to sell as well.
What's different this time? Yeah,
so that was much smaller Fry,
if you like. That was in 2020,
and Beijing Kunlun Tech sold Grinder upon a request by
the US government.
But of course, Grinder doesn't have anything like the
number of users Tiktok does.
It was sold for about $600 million,
which, if you look at Tiktok,
Tiktok people estimate, is worth perhaps more than $100 billion.
And the complaints are different.
So Grinder collects highly personal data,
including, for instance, the HIV status of its users.
And the US government didn't want the Chinese government to
be potentially blackmailing U.S.
citizens using this data. So in the midst of a
trade war with Washington at the time,
was Beijing going to throw its full weight behind what
remains a fairly niche dating app?
No. And India banned Tiktok in
2020, didn't it, after clashes on its border.
What happened after the ban?
Yeah, so Tiktok plus, I think now we're up to
more than 500 Chinese apps that have been banned in
India.
As you say, in 2020,
there were clashes on the India Chinese border and about
20 Indian soldiers died.
4 Chinese soldiers died. This ban came into effect,
which immediately worried many of the 200 million active TikTok
users in the in India because many of them used
it for their livelihoods.
They had small businesses, they'd be influencers,
they'd be selling things. Let's not forget that TikTok is
essentially
an e-commerce platform before anything else these days.
So there was that worry initially,
but after a few months,
we had the launch of YouTube shorts,
we had the launch of Instagram reels and they've managed
to consolidate a lot of basically all of the market
share that TikTok left behind.
So if TikTok does see the see leave the US,
we'll probably see a similar movement over there.
And lastly, the European Union also targeted TikTok this week.
Tell us a bit about that.
Yeah, so that's part of their push to protect children
from addictive and harmful content.
We're not yet seeing any big moves on the national
security front beyond banning it on on official phones in
the EU.