The plan involves the acquisition of American assets
The Chinese government is evaluating a plan that involves the acquisition of TikTok’s American activities by Elon Musk to prevent the app from being banned in the United States: Bloomberg News reports.
The contingency plan is one of the options Beijing is considering as the US Supreme Court decides whether to uphold a law requiring Chinese firm ByteDance to divest TikTok’s US operations by January 19.
Chinese government officials have not yet decided whether or not to proceed with the Musk option, the report said, stressing that the plan is still preliminary. They would prefer TikTok to remain owned by Beijing-based parent company ByteDance. But the scenarios are not at all positive as the Court’s judges signaled in the arguments hearing on January 10 that they are likely to decide to respect the current law. Senior Chinese officials had already begun discussing contingency plans for TikTok as part of a broad discussion about working with Donald Trump’s administration, one of which involves Musk, according to sources familiar with the matter.
TikTok has called reports that Chinese authorities are considering selling its American operations to Musk “pure fiction.” According to Bloomberg, senior Chinese officials have begun discussing contingency plans for TikTok amid tensions with the US administration. Among these, one scenario would involve Musk’s company X acquiring and managing TikTok USA alongside its own operations. “We cannot be expected to comment on pure fiction,” a TikTok spokesperson told AFP.
ANSA Agency Two Chinese apps boom in the United States in view of the TikTok ban – News – Ansa.it The alternative to TikTok in the US still speaks Chinese and sees ByteDance in a leading role. (HANDLE) A potential high-profile deal with one of Trump’s closest allies has some appeal for the Chinese government, which should have a say in the final sale of TikTok: the Tesla boss has spent more than $250 million supporting the re-election of the tycoon and was chosen for a leading role in improving the efficiency of government after the inauguration of the Republican. With more than 170 million users in the United States, TikTok could bolster X’s efforts to attract advertisers. Furthermore, Musk, who in April stated his opposition to the ban on the Chinese app in the US, has also founded a separate artificial intelligence company, xAI, which could benefit from the enormous amounts of data generated by TikTok. It’s unclear how much ByteDance knows about Mandarin leadership discussions or whether TikTok and Musk were involved. Just as it is not even clear whether Musk, TikTok and ByteDance have held talks on the terms of a possible agreement.
