US President Donald Trump has announced sweeping restrictions against Chinese-owned social media giants TikTok and WeChat, his latest explosive move aimed at countering China’s rising global power.
Trump on Thursday signed executive orders giving Americans 45 days to stop doing business with the Chinese platforms, effectively setting a deadline for a potential pressured sale of viral video sensation TikTok to Microsoft Corp.
Trump cited national security concerns for the moves, which also threw into doubt the US operations of WeChat’s parent firm, Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊), a powerful player in the video gaming industry and one of the world’s richest companies.
Photo: AP
Trump has taken an increasingly heavy hammer to US relations with China, challenging it on trade, military and economic fronts, and Thursday’s effort provoked more outrage in Beijing.
The new restrictions sent Tencent shares into a spin, with the issue tanking as much as 10 percent at one point in Hong Kong trade, wiping almost US$50 billion off its market capitalization.
Asian markets also took note, with investors concerned about increasingly bitter relations between the economic titans, which some fear could lead to a renewal of their painful trade dispute.
Officials from both sides are due to meet on Saturday next week to review a trade deal signed earlier this year.
“TikTok automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories,” Trump’s order said.
Data could potentially be used by China to track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers on people for blackmail and conduct corporate espionage, the order said.
Beijing slammed the move as “arbitrary political manipulation and suppression” and said that it would come at the expense of US users and companies.
TikTok said in a statement that it would “pursue all remedies available to us in order to ensure ... our company and our users are treated fairly — if not by the administration, then by the US courts.”
Trump’s order contended that WeChat captures user data that could then be exploited by the Chinese government, but provided no evidence that this is happening.
“WeChat captures the personal and proprietary information of Chinese nationals visiting the United States, thereby allowing the Chinese Communist Party a mechanism for keeping tabs on Chinese citizens who may be enjoying the benefits of a free society for the first time in their lives,” the order said.
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