China is showing a willingness to work with President-elect Donald Trump to maintain the presence of short-video service TikTok in the United States. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Monday that companies can make their own decisions about operations and acquisitions, while the government previously said it would block any forced sale of TikTok, The Wall Street Journal writes.
Image source: Solen Feyissa/unsplash.com
It was the department’s first comment since Trump said Sunday at a rally the day before his inauguration that for TikTok to continue operating in the U.S., the app should be sold, perhaps to “a joint venture between the current owners and/or new owners in which the U.S. would own 50% of capital.” “Honestly, we have no choice. We have to save him,” Trump said at a rally on Sunday.
After a brief shutdown due to the ban, TikTok resumed operations in the United States, thanking Trump for providing the service and its business partners with assurances that they would not have to pay large fines to continue operating.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew attended Trump’s inauguration, as well as a service at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington along with Trump, as well as Meta✴ CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos , Google CEO Sundar Pichai and others.
There are rumors that Elon Musk may become the buyer of the American part of TikTok. It turns out that TikTok founder Zhang Yiming knows the head of Tesla. According to Kevin Zhou, founder of Chinese technology news outlet Pandaily, Musk accompanied the then little-known entrepreneur on a visit to the car company’s California offices in 2014, before TikTok launched. Musk forgot about this meeting, but he made a great impression on Imin then. According to the journalist, Zhang then compared Musk to Apple founder Steve Jobs, noting that Musk acts more decisively and has a deeper vision.