Commentary: What TikTok and Tesla tell us about pragmatism in the US and China

LONDON: When Washington looks at China, it tends to see an ideological, interventionist, authoritarian superpower that favours its own companies while subverting foreign rivals. When it looks in the mirror, Washington sees the US as a pragmatic, capitalistic, democratic superpower that champions free speech and robust competition.

When it comes to the narrow treatment of TikTok in the US and Tesla in China, however, those stereotypes appear to have blurred. It is the US that is becoming more dogmatic while China is becoming more pragmatic.

Last week, President Joe Biden signed a law that will ban TikTok from US platforms unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance sells the business to an approved buyer. In a rare display of bipartisan unity, Congress argued that ownership of the video-sharing platform by a Chinese-related company endangered national security.

Who knew that Zach King’s flying wizard tricks or Bella Poarch’s lip-syncing videos were so worrisome?

TikTok provides a slick short-form video service used by 170 million Americans and 7 million businesses, much to the annoyance of US rivals such as Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat.

It has also gone to great lengths to try to convince US lawmakers that users’ data is safe and free from foreign manipulation. Over nearly three years, it has spent US$1.5 billion on building a ringfenced data infrastructure in the US in partnership with Oracle.

Nevertheless, there remain some strong reasons for banning TikTok. The first is the principle of reciprocity. Beijing has previously blocked US social media apps, including Facebook, Instagram and X, in China so it can hardly object if Washington strongarms TikTok.

The company also admits that China-based ByteDance