00:00 It's going to be very difficult to find a buyer willing to shell out that much money
00:04 in the US for something which is such a political hot potato there. And that's before even China
00:10 gets involved with a potential, if there is a buyer, ban on the sale because TikTok, to their
00:18 eyes, contains technology that they would put under an export ban. So what's left as a choice?
00:25 Well, the courts. And that's absolutely what Beijing is throwing its weight behind. We've
00:30 seen that with Blinken's latest visit. They'll be talking about this as a part of a number of things
00:36 behind the scenes. Now, why is Beijing really against this decision by the United States?
00:44 It depends who you ask. If you go to China, TikTok is seen as a beacon of Chinese technological
00:50 prowess around the world. Of course, if you ask any US lawmaker, the vast majority are going to
00:56 tell you, well, China wants TikTok to remain in the US because it uses it for espionage and for
01:02 propaganda. Now, the public hasn't seen masses of evidence for this, but we do know that TikTok,
01:09 whose parent company is ByteDance and is operated in China, is subject to Chinese laws stipulating
01:17 that its data may be used for national security purposes by the authorities should they choose to.
01:23 So in any case, no other Chinese export, to my eyes, has as much exposure to so many young people
01:30 in the West using it every day. And even if it's not of great strategic value today,
01:35 it might be in the future were a conflict between the US and China to appear.
01:40 And there's been a precedent to this as well, hasn't there? The Chinese owners of dating app
01:46 Grindr were forced to sell as well. What's different this time?
01:49 Yeah, so that was a much smaller fry, if you like. That was in 2020, and Beijing Kunlun Tech
01:56 sold Grindr upon a request by the US government. But of course, Grindr doesn't have anything like
02:01 the number of users TikTok does. It was sold for about $600 million, which if you look at TikTok,
02:07 TikTok, people estimate is worth perhaps more than $100 billion. And the complaints are different.
02:14 So Grindr collects highly personal data, including, for instance, the HIV status of its users. And
02:21 the US government didn't want the Chinese government to be potentially blackmailing US
02:26 citizens using this data. So in the midst of a trade war with Washington at the time,
02:31 was Beijing going to throw its full weight behind what remains a fairly niche dating app? No.
02:36 And India banned TikTok in 2020, didn't it, after clashes on its border.
02:42 What happened after the ban? Yeah, so TikTok plus, I think now we're up to more than 500
02:46 Chinese apps that have been banned in India. As you say, in 2020, there were clashes on the
02:51 India-Chinese border and about 20 Indian soldiers died, four Chinese soldiers died. This ban came
02:58 into effect, which immediately worried many of the 200 million active TikTok users in India,
03:06 because many of them used it for their livelihoods. They had small businesses,
03:08 they'd be influencers, they'd be selling things. Let's not forget that TikTok is essentially
03:12 an e-commerce platform before anything else these days. So there was that worry initially,
03:18 but after a few months, we had the launch of YouTube Shorts, we had the launch of Instagram
03:23 Reels, and they've managed to consolidate a lot of, basically all of the market share that TikTok
03:29 left behind. So if TikTok does leave the US, we'll probably see a similar movement over there.
03:36 And lastly, the European Union also targeted TikTok this week. Tell us a bit about that.
03:40 Yeah, so that's part of their push to protect children from addictive and harmful content.
03:44 We're not yet seeing any big moves on the national security front
03:48 beyond banning it on official phones in the EU.
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