HONG KONG - The US push to ban TikTok marks a new phase in its approach to data security that could eventually impact everything from electric vehicles to health care, reshaping trade relations between the world’s biggest economies. US President Joe Biden last week signed legislation barring Chinese parent ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok, a move aimed at preventing Beijing from accessing troves of data that the video sharing app collects from its 170 million American users. The law takes a page out of China’s playbook, viewing the potential misuse of data as a national security threat.
Although Beijing has long adopted far more restrictions on US companies in China, authorities have embraced firms that play by its rules and agree to store data locally. Elon Musk’s Tesla is a prime example: Bloomberg reported on April 29 that it will partner with Chinese tech giant Baidu for mapping and navigation functions to deploy autonomous driving features - data only entrusted to a select group of Chinese companies. The United States now appears to be moving “away from an open internet with unrestricted data flows and towards selected fragmentation based on national security concerns,” said Caitlin Chin-Rothmann, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“While TikTok is currently in the hot seat in part due to its enormous popularity and the scope of its data collection, it is not the first and will not be the last Chinese company that US lawmakers ta.
