The American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promises to deliver a ‘clean network’ in the U.S. In other words: free of Chinese applications and technology.
The tension between the U.S. and China is rising. China has been gaining a lot of influence in the tech world with the successful smartphone and network vendor Huawei, shopping platform Alibaba andAliExpress and of course in social media with TikTok. The United States was hesitant at first but is now taking action. After banning trade between U.S. companies and Huawei, it intends to deny access to TikTok in six weeks unless Microsoft closes a deal with ByteDance, TikTok’s parenting company, to acquire the U.S. branch of the company.
Getting rid of Chinese technology
The United States government is forging plans to completely eliminate any presence of Chinese technology on American soil, and Chinese apps should be removed from app stores as well. The government believes that apps such as TikTok and WeChat pose significant threats to the personal data of American citizens, according to CNBC. According to Pompeo, this paves the way for censorship by the Chinese communist party, which includes cloud services.
Huawei no longer has any hope of incorporating popular American services into its devices, such as apps from Microsoft, Facebook or Google, either pre-installed or downloaded from an app store. Pompeo refuses to give the Chinese access to the American network in any way. Media are jokingly describing it as the Chinese Firewall instead of the Chinese wall.
Presidential elections
We’ll have to wait to see how this situation evolves because the tension between the two countries is running high. At the same time, the United States is holding presidential elections, so this will also have an impact on the decision-making process.
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