A Way Forward for U.S. Policy on TikTok

The unfolding saga over TikTok and WeChat will have lasting impact far beyond the availability of dance videos and lip syncs. Reporters, tech watchers, First Amendment scholars and social media influencers alike are anxiously watching each twist in the fight between the U.S. and China over information technology and social media apps—a fight that presents a stark choice between the way a free and open society approaches the nexus of business and national security, and the path advocated by authoritarian governments like China.

At present, TikTok and U.S. companies Oracle and Walmart are racing to win the approval of a merger deal that resolves the app’s foreign ownership concerns before the fast-approaching Nov. 12 deadline for TikTok to be sold to a U.S. company. The most recent proposal would have created a new entity TikTok Global owned by ByteDance, Oracle, Walmart and ByteDance’s investors. But details about the actual control over the company were unclear and disputed. TikTok and several of its creators are also fighting the Trump Administration in U.S. courts over a ban of the app’s transactions in the U.S. Set to go into effect Nov. 12, a recent ruling halts that ban until legal battles are resolved.

Hu Xijin, the editor of the Chinese state media outlet the Global Times, weighed in recently on the most recent merger proposal. “The US restructuring of TikTok’s stake and actual control should be used as a model and promoted globally,” remarked Hu on Twitter. “Overseas operation of companies such as Google, Facebook shall all undergo such restructure and be under actual control of local companies for security concerns.”

It’s not exactly a good sign for Chinese state media to tout a U.S. play designed to be “tough on China” as a model for global behavior. The United States may be bumbling its way into a precedent the consequences of which it has yet to anticipate. 

On Sept. 27, a federal district court granted TikTok an initial temporary reprieve in the form of a preliminary injunction against a Commerce Department ban, which would block downloads of the app from U.S. app stores. On Oct. 30, a federal district court enjoined  the more comprehensive  ban of the app in the U.S. that was set to take effect on Nov. 12. The Trump administration is vigorously challenging both rulings, while the status of the Nov. 12 divestiture deadline remains unclear.   But despite the numerous twists and turns, muddled messaging from Washington, contradictory statements from Beijing, and even a subsequent tweet from Hu railing against the idea that the United States would “rob [TikTok] and turn it into a US baby,” the vision Hu articulated is consistent with a model for the globalized world and localized internet that China has promoted over the past decade. As the editor of the party-run Global Times, Hu often reflects the more nationalistic elements of Chinese Communist Party leadership. Hu’s tweet could be read as a threat to American companies operating in China—or elsewhere—a suggestion that the Chinese government will try to exert greater control over those companies in response to U.S. actions on TikTok. There is little to this specific threat, at least in China itself, however. Facebook and Google, the two companies that Hu mentioned, by and large do not have overseas operations in China that could be reasonably commandeered by local companies. Both were initially ejected from the Chinese market more than a decade ago. But an ever-louder chorus in Europe is calling for a reckoning on Big Tech that includes the possibility of “breaking up” companies such as Facebook and Google.

Hu’s proposal also speaks to a larger point, one that should worry democracies. The idea of a world in which there are no truly multinational companies—only companies in different regions adapting to the control and the value systems of their host countries—is inherently authoritarian.

This vision is in line with the digital and cyber sovereignty agenda that China and Russia have championed at the United Nations since 2011. The two have favored advancing domestic internets and government-controlled internets, which can be shut off—and increasingly are in response to protests—in contrast to a free and open global internet. According to Access Now’s #KeepItOn report on internet shutdowns in 2019, governments shut down the internet during protests at least 65 times—most notably Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Algeria, India and Indonesia. China and Russia have also pushed for expanding online censorship of political content and promoting data localization policies that prohibit data outside national borders in efforts to digitally wall off authoritarian societies. In recent years, these ideas have gained more global traction, as nations from Vietnam to Indonesia increase their governments’ control over the internet. In December 2019, the United Nations even adopted a Russia-backed cybercrime resolution that envisions a more expansive view of the misuse of communications technologies, potentially to include political speech.

This sovereign approach is consistent with the idea that there are no universal rights, only local laws. For years, multinational corporations that sought to operate in both democratic and authoritarian states have faced dicey choices over whether to comply with censorship requests and demands for data. Local control of multinational companies would eliminate this choice. And while a complete splinternet that ends multinational operations may not be on the near-term horizon, even democracies are looking to exert more local or regional control over internet regulation. The EU’s digital sovereignty push is but one example of dissatisfaction with the status quo.

The U.S. should advance a foreign policy agenda that resists the cyber sovereignty approach and stands up for universal rights. But the blunt, chaotic and process-free unilateral action on TikTok has failed to draw a clear distinction between democratic and autocratic measures taken in the name of national security. In the absence of clearly defined criteria around ownership, data storage, data access and algorithmic influence—all thorny components of the global information contest in which democracies find themselves—the United States risks emulating the authoritarian model.

For TikTok, that may mean going back to the drawing board and attempting to reverse some of the damage done by President Trump’s overly personalized rhetoric and obliterated national security process. To do so, the United States should instead join up with the growing number of democratic allies that are also raising concerns about TikTok and Chinese information influence more broadly in the wake of […]

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