A popular app enjoyed by 170 million or more Americans went ‘dark’ on Sunday after the Chinese-owned TikTok was banned in the USA as a perceived threat to national security.
I am not a user. My interest is as a ‘China-watcher’ worried about the deteriorating relationship between the world’s two superpowers. I was however surprised to see that there was no outburst of rejoicing from the legion of China ‘hawks’ that this evil weapon of the genocidal Communists had been so effectively shot down (and shut down). Indeed, the originator of the ban (President-elect Trump) and its dutiful implementor (President Biden) seemed to be doing their best to save it. Very confusing.
The origin of the ban was in 2020 when President Trump was campaigning for re-election. One of his rallies was embarrassingly badly attended after college students operated a social media prank on TikTok persuading people not to go. Trump was furious and threatened to have TikTok banned. His political supporters scurried to help and quickly latched onto the fact that TikTok had a Chinese corporate owner (Bytedance), albeit headquartered in Singapore.
In the feverish, hostile bipartisanship which surrounds anything Chinese, it wasn’t difficult to mobilise Congressional support for a ban on national security grounds. Congressional hearings produced no evidence that TikTok’s Chinese owners had ever tried to share sensitive information with Chinese authorities, engage in espionage or do anything more than make a lot of money for shareholders by providing original but harmless entertainment. But they might, it was argued.
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