BEIJING - ByteDance Group's TikTok, an overseas version of Chinese short video sharing app Douyin, faces an existential crisis in the United States, as murmurs of a"crackdown" from the White House forced the Chinese company to engage in talks on selling its US business to Microsoft.
The US government has not introduced any specific policy against TikTok, only threatened it through a number of vague statements. TikTok's US management and staff include people from the US, and US investors also own a significant proportion of its equity. The US government's move, which has forced ByteDance to sell TikTok to a US company, is akin to a forced technology transfer and an example of the US' open seizure of Chinese intellectual property.