Greetings from Hong Kong! I’m Clay Chandler, Fortune’s executive editor for Asia. Diane has invited me to weigh in weekly from this side of the world. If you’ve got an idea, insight, story or point of view that merits mulling in this space, shoot me a line!
America’s TikTok takedown is a tangle of contradictions.
At its center stands U.S. President Joe Biden, who last month signed into law a bill giving TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, nine months to either sell the platform to an American owner or face a ban. Biden and a bipartisan chorus in Congress insist TikTok poses a grave threat to national security and affords China’s Communist rulers a powerful platform for spreading anti-American propaganda.
Yet, as Biden decried TikTok, his campaign ramped up reliance on it to mobilize young voters.
Donald Trump’s stance on the ban is no more consistent. As president, Trump denounced TikTok and led two unsuccessful efforts to force its sale. Now Trump says he opposes a ban on the grounds that it will enrich Mark Zuckerberg.
Trump detractors say the real reason for his TikTok flip flop is that he is trying to curry to favor with MAGA mega-donor Jeffery Yass, whose company, Philadelphia-based Susquehanna International Group, owns 15% of ByteDance. Yass’s personal stake in ByteDance is worth about $15 billion, according to Bloomberg, making it the largest asset in his $40.8 billion fortune.
And therein lies another paradox. A main argument of ban backers is that ByteDance can’t be trusted because the company is controlled by its Chinese founder, Zhang Yiming, who must bow to the whims of the Chinese state. Yet about 60% of ByteDance is held by institutional investors, mostly big American firms, including General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital, KKR, the Carlyle Group, and Coatue Management.
TikTok’s talking points, too, are convoluted. Singapore-based CEO Shou Zi Chew last month assured U.S. lawmakers that TikTok is an American company, privately owned, independently operated, and unbeholden to Beijing. But even as Chew made his rounds on Capitol Hill, commerce officials in Beijing declared that ByteDance is subject to Chinese law on technology exports and warned that the Chinese government would “strongly oppose” TikTok’s forced sale.
Chinese officials have blasted the TikTok ban as a case study in American hypocrisy. China’s state-controlled media have mocked the U.S. for meddling in the affairs of a privately-owned tech startup as it preaches the virtues of free speech, free enterprise, and respect for intellectual property to its trade partners.
Biden officials say it’s the Chinese who are laying it on thick. “I find it supremely ironic because government officials [in China] are using the X platform to criticize the United States,” U.S. ambassador to Beijing Nicholas Burns fumed last month. “They don’t give their own citizens the right to use X, to use Instagram, to use Facebook, to have access to Google.”
Nor, he might have added, does China permit citizens to use TikTok.
TikTok will be among the topics we take up at Fortune’s Brainstorm AI Summit in Singapore on July 30-31 at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Places are limited and the event is by invitation only. You can register and learn more about topics and speakers here.
More news below.
Clay Chandler
clay.chandler@fortune.com
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This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Nicholas Gordon.
