Commentary: China will decide TikTok’s fate in America
Despite the last-minute drama of potential buyers for the app in the US, Beijing will have the last word, says Catherine Thorbecke for Bloomberg Opinion.
A TikTok app is shown on a phone in San Francisco, Jan 17, 2025. (Photo: AP/Jeff Chiu)
TOKYO: The White House’s TikTok deal has devolved into quite a spectacle.
Ahead of the Saturday (Apr 5) deadline for the app to divest from its Chinese parent company or face a United States ban, we still don’t have an answer on how it might do this. A flurry of last-minute interest has emerged, with players from Amazon to Andreessen Horowitz and Blackstone reportedly tossing their hats in the increasingly crowded ring of potential buyers.
Some of the latest reports suggest that investors could arrange a deal that keeps ownership of the app’s powerful recommendation algorithm in the hands of Beijing-based ByteDance. If that’s the case, it’s not clear how that would assuage one of the central concerns that spurred the ban law in the first place: That the recommendation engine could be exploited to influence the content served to TikTok’s 170 million American users.
This arrangement may appeal to Beijing, which tweaked its export rules to include algorithms when talks of a ban first emerged. But it won’t quell the fears of China hawks in President Donald Trump’s own Cabinet.
A LITTLE REDUCTION IN TARIFFS?
It’s notable that the deadline comes soon after Trump unleashed a round of punishing tariffs on China as part of his “Liberation Day” blitz. Yet just last week, the president said that he would consider giving China “a little reduction in tariffs” to secure a TikTok deal.
Trump also suggested he could simply extend the deadline – an outcome that increasingly seems most likely – even if this move represents an extraordinary overreach of executive power, going above Congress and the courts.
While there’s been a lot of chatter from the US side in recent weeks, there’s been radio silence from Beijing and ByteDance.
As I’ve written before, Trump’s determination to save TikTok, rather than let this play out in the courts or the private sector, is only yielding more power to America’s geopolitical nemesis. And by admitting that lowering tariffs “sounds like something I would do” to secure a TikTok deal, he’s ceding the next move to Beijing.
But President Xi Jinping likely won’t see a moderate concession on tariffs as a win.
TikTok doesn’t even operate in China, so Xi isn’t under any pressure to please American users. And state-backed media have been clear that China views this as a precedent-setting saga that could leave other companies open to US “plunder”.
TRUMP HAS DELEGITIMISED NATIONAL SECURITY CONCERNS
Earlier, the key question was: “What will it take for Beijing to let TikTok go?” Now, we also need to worry about what it will take for Trump to let it go.
And by obfuscating the national security concerns to advance his tariff agenda, he has delegitimised them.
While all the last-minute buyer drama spurred intrigue, it’s worth questioning if any of this will fulfil the goal of keeping American social media users safe.
A scenario where ByteDance maintains control over the algorithm may ease some data collection and spying concerns, but seems to bring us back to where we started over fears of algorithm infiltration. And punting the deadline further doesn’t address those issues, either.
While ByteDance has been mum on the TikTok drama, its Chinese sister app, Douyin, has been in the news at home after local regulators forced the company to offer the public much more clarity on how the app recommends and moderates content. In a recently launched website, Douyin says that it does not spy on users and offered more transparency into how its algorithm tracks behaviour to serve content.
TACKLING BIG TECH RISKS
It’s not just Douyin being forced to shed light, but competitors as well. When it comes to social media, Beijing’s heavy hand is self-serving and can be stifling for users and companies, but it has been effective in tackling universal issues like youth digital safety.
Washington, meanwhile, has had a toothless and whack-a-mole approach – despite plenty of scandals over Big Tech’s risks. Perhaps it’s time to try a different, more comprehensive method.
Rather than a years-long attack on a single platform, demanding algorithmic transparency from tech firms would allow US policymakers to have a closer look under the hood and address broader concerns around social media harms.
It was remarkable to see lawmakers rally around the TikTok law last year, given they have dragged their feet for decades on any rules to keep social media users safe online.
As it stands now, Trump has shown that the law can be punted on a whim and then turned into a negotiating chip for his chaotic tariff ambitions – while handing the final decision on the fate of an app beloved by nearly half the US population over to Beijing.
