The U.S. president, Donald Trump, already banned Huawei and TikTokand is now looking at restrictions or bans for other Chinese companies. Trump acknowledged this during a press conference.
TikTok has been given 90 days by Trump to divest the American branch before a complete ban on the app can be imposed in the US. The main reason for increasing the pressure is to guarantee the privacy of users, which would only be possible when the app is owned by an American company.
To the question of whether other Chinese apps such as Alibaba can expect similar treatment, the president acknowledged; “We are looking at other things yes”. With this, Trump echoed the words of the American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who previously stated that Chinese apps should be removed from American app stores.
U.S. and China facing each other in the digital world
Restricting Chinese apps follow after a period of blacklisting Chinese manufacturers. Tech manufacturer Huawei is in trouble because it is no longer able to buy certain smartphone chips, as manufacturers are no longer allowed to do business with the Chinese company.
In addition to a ban on TikTok, the U.S. is also threatening to ban other Chinese companies such as Alibaba, which is Amazons biggest online retail competitor and offers cloud services like AWS.
The main argument put forward is that data security and privacy cannot be guaranteed as long as a Chinese company has data at its disposal. In the case of TikTok, the U.S. solution is handing over the app and service to an American company. Microsoft and Twitter have already shown an interest in at least taking over the American part of the app.
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