Unfortunately for Bytedance, there’s nothing it can do about the rule of law in China.
By all rights, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, should be one of the world’s most respected companies. The technology start-up has created an innovative social-media platform with global appeal—an achievement that puts ByteDance in the elite ranks of Facebook and X.
There’s a single reason the company doesn’t get that respect: It’s Chinese.
On March 13, the House of Representatives passed a bill with unusually wide bipartisan support that will ban TikTok from the United States unless ByteDance divests its stake in the short-video app to a non-Chinese investor. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo recently said she supports the legislation, adding that “TikTok presents serious national-security risks to the people of the United States.”
The bill still needs to clear the Senate, but if it does, TikTok will most likely be barred from the world’s largest economy. The Chinese government has already signaled that it will oppose a forced sale of TikTok, apparently out of concern that its technology will fall into foreign hands.
That’s tragic, not only for TikTok’s millions of avid American fans, but also for the greater cause of innovation and free enterprise. Both Beijing and Washington are sacrificing what could be tremendous, mutual economic gain to geopolitical competition and security jitters.
The Chinese government’s drive for control and self-reliance has intensified in recent years, but the long-term pattern is consistent: Beijing has always clogged free markets to protect its political interests and promote its own corporate champions. The United States, however, has taken a turn, and the TikTok ban is representative.
The business of America is supposed to be business, but now Washington is adding a corollary: except if you’re Chinese. President Joe Biden’s administration is looking to replace Chinese-made cranes in American ports, also over security concerns. Last year, Ford announced a plan to manufacture electric-vehicle batteries in a new Michigan factory using Chinese technology, raising a storm of protest from lawmakers fearful that the deal would bolster China’s position in a key industry.
Paranoid politicians in Washington, obsessed with the threat from China, would be all too easy to blame.
