United States | China in your hand

Both America’s political camps agree that TikTok is troubling

That does not mean it will be banned

BEVERLY HILLS, CA-NOVEMBER 16, 2022: Daniel MacDonald,25, right, uses his iPhone to take video of a man stopped at a red light on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills as MacDonald asks the driver of the Porshe, Rolando Aqui with his French bulldog aboard, What do you do for a living? The man answered that he is a hairstylist. MacDonalds videos have gone viral and he has amassed millions of followers on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, becoming a millionaire himself in the process. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) — Image: Getty Images

Mar 30th 2023|DALLAS

“Abusing state power to suppress foreign companies”. That might sound like a description of China’s economic strategy, but instead it is the charge that China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has levelled against America’s government, without apparent irony. March 28th marked the deadline for TikTok, a wildly popular Chinese social-media app, to be wiped from federal-government devices because of worries about security. Attacks on TikTok, which claims 150m American users, will not stop there. Politicians in Washington are considering two options that China’s government has long embraced for American companies: curbing TikTok’s freedom to operate, or an outright ban.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “China in your hand”