President Donald Trump said he could save his temporary blessing to create a new US-based Tiktok service between Oracle and ByteDans, putting the deal in question, as Chinese state media expressed reluctance in Beijing. . . .
In an interview on Fox News on Monday, Trump said he would not approve the deal if the Chinese company retains control of TikTok.
“They won’t have anything to do with it, and if they do, we just won’t close the deal,” Trump said, referring to ByteDance, owner of TikTok.
Shortly after Trump’s remarks, China’s state-affiliated Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Zijin tweeted that Beijing would reject the possibility “because the deal would endanger China’s national security, interests and dignity.” . . .
The Global Times is a newspaper run by the People’s Daily, the leading newspaper of the Communist Party. Hu’s tweets are closely followed by the Chinese government to accurately forecast previous moves, although his comments sometimes do not reflect official policy.
ByteDance was pressured to strike a deal for TikTok in August, when Trump threatened to ban the app in the US over national security concerns about the service’s data collection. After Microsoft Corp. made a full buyout proposal, ByteDance instead turned to Oracle’s offer, in which the Chinese parent will retain a strong majority stake.
ByteDance may end up owning up to 80% of TikTok Global, which would include the app’s operations in the US and the rest of the world except China.
On Friday, Trump said he had approved the deal with Oracle and WalMart Inc. “in concept.”
The valuation of TikTok has been an imminent issue in the wake of the confrontation between Washington and Beijing over the negotiations.
According to people familiar with this, Oracle does not have doors to spy on 100 million US users of the video sharing app or to be used to spy on the company’s Chinese parents and to review Tiktok source code huh The American software giant has guaranteed that it can protect TikTok users’ data from foreign influence.
