China States US' Smash & Grab of TikTok as 'Theft'

In the ongoing war over TikTok, China states the US’ demands for the sale of the app’s American operations to Microsoft as ‘theft’. It also suggests that Beijing may block the transaction. The editorial, published two days earlier by the China Daily newspaper, represented Beijing’s strongest defence yet of ByteDance Ltd. and its viral video app. “China will by no means accept the ‘theft’ of a Chinese technology company, and it has plenty of ways to respond if the administration carries out its planned smash and grab,” reveals the editorial section of the newspaper.

President Donald Trump also insisted several times that any sale of TikTok assets would include some form of payment to the U.S., and demanded that TikTok be sold to an American company by September 15, 2020 or be shut down.  At the same time as his advisers are racing against the clock to strike a deal for its U.S. assets, ByteDance’s Founder Zhang Yiming has jotted down his views in a second letter to his employees, declaring Trump’s real goal is not to save but to shut down TikTok. Trump has the power to cripple ByteDance’s prized asset by adding TikTok to the U.S. entity list, which would compel American companies such as Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google to drop the service from their app stores.

While the China Daily acknowledged that selling the U.S. business ‘might be preferable’ to ByteDance, the newspaper compared the process to officially sanctioned theft, a sentiment echoed in other prominent state media including the Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper. “With competitiveness now dependent on the ability to collect and use data, it offers an either or choice of submission or mortal combat in the tech realm,” the China Daily says.

“If following the wrong example set by U.S., every country could use national security as an excuse to target American companies,” spokesman Wang Wenbin expresses to a regular news briefing in Beijing. “The U.S. should not to open a Pandora’s box, otherwise it will swallow the bitter fruit itself”.

It’s unclear what regulatory measures China could take. The Global Times wrote China has a ‘limited ability’ to protect its companies since the U.S. still enjoys technological superiority.

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