Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Moves stir fears
Trump’s orders on WeChat, TikTok raise China social media alarm.
With the stroke of a pen on Thursday night, President Donald Trump made his strategic fight with China hit home for potentially billions of people — generating confusion, panic and fear around the globe.
Trump’s move to ban the Chinese-owned TikTok and WeChat starting in midSeptember sent shock waves through the tech industry and the many American businesses that rely on the apps to sell goods in China.
The orders could bar the apps from the Apple and Google app stores, effectively removing them from U.S. distribution. U.S. experts expressed skepticism about its legal authority.
Earlier, Trump threatened a deadline of Sept. 15 to “close down” TikTok in the United
States unless Microsoft Corp. or another company acquires it.
The decision spurred alarm on Chinese social media, with WeChat users in the U.S. posting contact information so friends and family could reach them if the app disappeared. An online forum popular with stock investors asked users if they would give up their iPhones or WeChat if Apple Inc. eliminated the app from its store: They voted to ditch their phones by a margin of 20 to 1.
Of all Trump’s shots against China, from imposing tariffs to battling Huawei Technologies Co. to ending Hong Kong’s special trading status, the executive orders against TikTok and WeChat potentially have the widest impact. Beyond the financial blow, they threaten to sever communications ties among
the people of the world’s biggest economies in addition to spurring a decoupling of the tech industry that could ripple around the world.
“This move points to a hegemonic war — the U.S. is trying to suppress China’s rise as a super power,” said Yik Chan Chin, who researches global media and communications policy at the Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou. “All these things will leave a bad impression in China, and the tide of nationalism is already very high right now.”
China’s Foreign Ministry said it opposed the move but gave no indication whether Beijing might retaliate.
“This is a pretty broad and pretty quick expansion of the technology Cold War between the U.S. and China,” said Steven Weber, faculty director for the Berkeley Center for Long Term Cybersecurity.
TikTok, owned by Beijingbased ByteDance Ltd., is popular for its short, catchy videos. The company says it has 100
million users in the United States and hundreds of millions worldwide. WeChat and Tencent are ingrained in China and among its diaspora around the globe: WeChat, which has more than 1 billion users, is relied upon so heavily that many people have never exchanged phone numbers or emails.
From Wal-Mart Inc. and Starbucks Corp. to the NBA and Nike Inc., nearly every major American consumer brand with business in China is deeply intertwined with Tencent and its network, which includes WeChat and investee JD.com.
Jason Gui, co-founder of San Francisco-based startup Vue Smart Glasses, said his team has to rely on WeChat to communicate with suppliers in China and a ban would be very “disruptive.” Emails sent to manufacturers in China are often unanswered for days, whereas inquiries through WeChat will get immediate attention, he said.
“When the U.S. imposes these bans, they may not realize how intertwined the relationships between U.S. and China have become,” he said. “Our communication lifeline with China depends on WeChat. It
hurts small businesses that have limited resources to figure out how to circumvent these bans.”
China officially reacted with caution on Friday, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin defending the companies and saying the U.S. “is using national security as an excuse and using state power to oppress non-American businesses.” Just a day earlier, Foreign Minister Wang Yi again tried to offer an olive branch by urging the U.S. to “reject decoupling” and stop “any attempt to artificially create a so-called ‘new Cold War.’” Yang Jiechi, a Politburo member, said the door for talks with the U.S. is still open.
Trump’s administration has stepped up its campaign against China in recent weeks, betting that a hard line against Beijing will help him win November’s election despite upsetting millions of younger TikTok users. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo this week urged American companies to bar Chinese applications from their app stores, part of his “Clean Network” guidance designed to prevent authorities in China from accessing personal data of U.S. citizens.
Pompeo’s announcement generated alarm in China. Hu Xijin, the editor of the Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper, suggested a division of the internet that stifles commerce and ties between people would prompt the risk of a “hot war” to rise.
But for many U.S. officials, the bans are simple reciprocity. China walled off its own online sphere years ago, creating an alternate universe where Tencent and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. stood in for Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.
Yet while President Xi Jinping was an early proponent of cyber-sovereignty, China’s view has changed as its tech champions have become fierce global competitors. By banning certain apps, the U.S. is also looking to deprive China of valuable data that is essential for honing the algorithms that will fuel the modern economy powered by artificial intelligence.