TikTok’s US lawsuit gets Chinese state media support as ByteDance looks to avoid ban of its flagship app

Xinhua, China Daily and others ran articles on Wednesday supporting TikTok and ByteDance’s lawsuit against the US government
TikTok was caught off guard by a fresh effort to ban the app or force a sale, which rapidly gained momentum this year and was signed in to law last month

TikTok

Coco Fengin Beijing

Published: 6:00pm, 8 May 2024

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Chinese state media outlets showed support for TikTok in a number of articles on Wednesday after the short video app operator and its Beijing-based owner ByteDance filed a lawsuit against the US government in a bid to overturn a law requiring the divestiture of the app’s US operations or face a ban.

An article from Xinhua News Agency, directly controlled by China’s State Council, argued that the US legislation signed into law at the end of April represents “suppression of the popular app” based on “unfounded national security concerns due to its Chinese ownership”.

Echoing arguments that TikTok made in its legal challenge, Xinhua said the law “is raising concerns about constitutional rights and the principle of fair competition being violated”.

China Daily, which is operated by the Communist Party, used a recent move supportive of electric vehicle maker Tesla to argue that China is more open to foreign business than the US.

China may soon allow Tesla to test robotaxis in the country, China Daily reported on Wednesday. The move “again demonstrates the Chinese government’s positive stance on opening further” to foreign business, while the US is showing signs of “rising trade protectionism”, the newspaper said.

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Chinastarmarket.cn, an online publication affiliated with the Shanghai government, also praised TikTok’s determination to overturn a law that some see as an existential threat to the app, as the US is its largest market. The challenge is “a fight with its back to the river”, the news outlet wrote, using a Chinese idiom that describes a make-or-break situation.

US government scrutiny of TikTok, a regular feature of Washington for years now, rapidly escalated in March when the company was caught off guard by a new bill that the House passed and later tied to US$95-billion in foreign aid, including funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, before sending it to the Senate. President Joe Biden signed it into law on April 24.

The law gives ByteDance 270 days – until January 19, 2025 – to find a buyer for the app. If it does not divest, Apple’s App Store and Google Play will be forced to remove it.

The Chinese tech giant has tapped American law firm Covington & Burling to fight the law. The firm helped block a statewide TikTok ban in Montana last year.

In 2021, Covington & Burling represented Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi in challenging the US Department of Defense’s designation of the company as a “communist Chinese military company”, which would have blacklisted it from US financial markets. An agreement to remove Xiaomi from the list was reached within four months.

This is the first serious legislative effort to ban TikTok in the US. The last significant attempt was in 2020, when then-president Donald Trump issued executive orders on the ByteDance app and Tencent Holdings’ WeChat.

Executive orders tend to be on weaker legal footing, and the Biden administration revoked the orders in 2021.

China’s Ministry of Commerce has repeatedly said that it would oppose a forced sale of TikTok, the first Chinese app to find major success overseas. In 2020, Beijing updated its rules governing exports to include technology that likely covers the recommendation algorithms that drive TikTok’s success.

A divestiture “is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally”, TikTok and ByteDance wrote in their legal petition.