“Elon Musk buys TikTok”: the Chinese idea to avoid the US ban. But ByteDance denies it

BEIJING - From TikTok to XTok? “Chinese officials are considering a potential option that would involve Elon Musk acquiring TikTok’s U.S. operations” to avoid the app being effectively banned. The indiscretion launched by Bloomberg has already led to initial reactions: “Pure fiction,” says a spokesperson for the social media.

The plan to sell to Musk would be one of several options that China is exploring while the U.S. Supreme Court is deciding whether to uphold the law that requires TikTok’s parent company, China’s ByteDance, to divest itself of TikTok’s U.S. operations by January 19 or face a ban from the U.S. market. Bloomberg itself says that the plan is still in the preliminary phase, that no decision has been made yet and that Beijing would much rather TikTok remain in ByteDance’s hands. “It is unclear how much ByteDance is aware of the Chinese government’s discussions or whether TikTok and Musk were involved. It is also unclear whether Musk, TikTok and ByteDance have had discussions about the terms of a potential deal. Musk’s X — formerly of Twitter — would take control of TikTok US and run the business together,” Bloomberg continues.

“The sale or divestment of TikTok involves the export of technology and the procedures must be carried out in accordance with Chinese laws,” Beijing’s Ministry of Commerce said last March. For this reason — despite “ByteDance is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government, but is a private company,” as TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has stated many times — the Party will have a say in the matter. “Beijing will not order ByteDance to sell the app to a specific investor, but it has a key role to play in the discussions because Chinese export controls require government approval for the sale of domestically developed algorithms to recommend content to foreign entities,” the Wall Street Journal recalls.

Why sell to Musk? “If the story is accurate, it would be a powerful demonstration of how highly PRC officials think of Musk and his relationship with President-elect Trump,” Bill Bishop, a veteran China analyst, wrote in his newsletter Sinocism. “Senior Chinese officials had already begun discussing contingency plans for TikTok as part of a broader discussion about how to work with Donald Trump’s administration, one of which involves Musk,” Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. “A potential high-profile deal with one of Trump’s closest allies would be attractive to the Chinese government. Musk is well positioned to influence U.S.-China relations because he is the world’s richest person and owns companies that straddle the world’s two largest economies.”

Beijing is benevolent towards Musk

Musk enjoys an excellent reputation in China, even among the highest levels of the Party. He has a good relationship with Premier Li Qiang. It was under his leadership, in 2018, when he was head of the CCP in Shanghai, that Li worked to have Musk's company, Tesla, open its largest plant abroad, in the midst of growing tensions in the trade war between the United States and China.

US lawmakers have long expressed fears that the communist government could force ByteDance to hand over data collected from US users. Or that the social network could be used by Beijing to interfere in elections, or to spread propaganda and disinformation.

ByteDance, founded in Beijing by Zhang Yiming, is now a colossus worth 225 billion dollars. TikTok, born in 2017, is the international version of Douyin (its name in Mandarin), launched a year earlier and aimed exclusively at the Chinese market: TikTok is inaccessible in China and Douyin has different content and rules.

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