HONG KONG, CHINA – JANUARY 18: In this photo, the TikTok logo and the United States flag are seen on screens on January 18, 2025 in Hong Kong, China. As TikTok’s impending ban looms, users are increasingly migrating to alternative platforms like Xiaohongshu due to concerns about data privacy and the potential shutdown of their beloved app. This shift reflects a broader trend where users are looking for platforms that offer similar engagement without the uncertainty surrounding TikTok’s future in the US, especially as legal battles and political pressure mount ahead of the Jan. 19 compliance-or-ban deadline. (Photo by Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)
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“This saga was never about TikTok’s usefulness or popularity, but its Chinese ownership and apparent ties to the Chinese Communist Party.” This is from recently pension at Washington Postand it’s an unwitting reminder that the attacks on TikTok were never about fears of China or the CCP, but instead about protectionism for American companies suffering from being beaten at their own game by a seasoned competitor.
Think about it first of the post joke about “Chinese ownership” of TikTok. It is at odds with the simple economic reality that China remains a very poor country (about 40 percent of the population gets by on $1,700/year) with a very mature venture capital industry in 2026, let alone in 2016 when TikTok opened its proverbial doors. In other words, TikTok was already there American property because of the endemic US expertise in investing in technology start-ups. By extension, the deal struck by President Trump to spin off parts of TikTok was largely an American-American exchange.
To which critics will respond that it was American-owned or not, the problem has long been that any kind of “Chinese ownership” puts TikTok in a position where it could be forced to conduct “surveillance of US citizens, collecting user data for malicious purposes and equipping its sophisticated algorithm to spread propaganda, especially in the event of a conflict.” The previous quote is from the same Washington Post pension. The claim fails three times, and probably more.
Let’s start with allegations about TikTok as a surveillance tool. This is hard to argue when we remember that if China and the CCP want to “surveill US citizens,” they hardly need TikTok. Similar data is readily available from tech and social media companies in the state, given their ability to track user communications (e-mail), what they watch and what they don’t watch while online, which ads they like and don’t like while online, etc.
From there, it’s worth considering the implications of TikTok’s “apparent ties to the Chinese Communist Party” and the possibility that it may be sharing user-harvested information with the CCP. Such a thing would have existential qualities, wouldn’t it? Stop and imagine the public relations and consequences of using it revealed that TikTok is or was a front for malicious CCP surveillance. It would be the end of TikTok, thus raising a seemingly obvious question about why TikTok creators would go to such remarkable lengths to prosper in the most competitive commercial sector on earth, only to graciously give away what the CCP could already take from US tech companies.
All of which brings us to the American owners of TikTok. Why would they risk significant amounts of investment capital on a business that is playing so nice with its future by helping the CCP? In other words, TikTok could not function as a source of information for the CCP even if it wanted to. Of American owners he wouldn’t allow it.
Which brings us to of the post accusations about the possibility that TikTok could use its “sophisticated algorithm to spread propaganda, especially in the event of a conflict.” The latter will be answered with the statistics for the first McDonald’s opened in China (Shenzhen) in 1990, this after decades of the CCP feeding its people anti-American propaganda. Still, the 400 workers trained to feed the Chinese yearning for Americana weren’t enough, nor were the 460 seats at the first Chinese McDonald’s.
It’s just a comment that the US has long had the ultimate in propaganda: freedom and the prosperity that comes with it. Which means the only danger to the US is not TikTok and the CCP, but a pundit and political class that is so willing to make the US act like the CCP.
