The Trump administration’s threat to ban the Chinese-owned short video app TikTok unless it is acquired by a U.S. company could spell trouble for other Chinese technology companies with global ambitions.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday that the U.S. wants to ban “untrusted” Chinese-owned apps and impose new restrictions on Chinese cloud providers and handset makers, saying they pose data privacy and national security risks. Pompeo specifically named TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based tech firm ByteDance Ltd, and WeChat, the popular Tencent Holdings-owned social messaging platform.
