TikTok is too Chinese for the US—and too American for China

TikTok is feeling the heat in the US because it’s seen as fundamentally a Chinese app. After Microsoft emerged as the most likely contender to buy TikTok from its Chinese parent ByteDance, with the blessing of the Trump administration, it sparked a major discussion on Chinese social media (link in Chinese). Then Zhang Yiming, ByteDance’s founder and CEO, added fuel to fire with a company memo (August 3) that expressed understanding of the “macro” conditions fueling the sale demand—and failed to mention the word “China.”