Chinese officials are considering the possibility of Elon Musk acquiring the US operations of TikTok if the company fails in its legal fight to fend off a ban on the short-video social app, according to Bloomberg.
The publication says “people familiar with the matter” tell it that while Chinese officials prefer keeping the TikTok app under the umbrella of parent company ByteDance Ltd., U.S. Supreme Court justices on January 10 indicated they are leaning on upholding the TikTok ban. This has spurred senior Chinese officials to explore contingency plans for the social app, looking for ways to work with incoming U.S. president Donald Trump’s administration. One of the options is to sell the app in the U.S. to X owner Musk.
Under one scenario that’s been discussed by the Chinese government, Musk’s X — the former Twitter — would take control of TikTok US and run the businesses together, the people said. With more than 170 million users in the US, TikTok could bolster X’s efforts to attract advertisers. Musk also founded a separate artificial intelligence company, xAI, that could benefit from the huge amounts of data generated from TikTok.
Chinese officials have yet to reach any firm consensus about how to proceed and their deliberations are still preliminary, the report’s sources said. Musk and his representatives did not respond to a Bloomberg request for comment.
Musk posted in April that he thinks TikTok should remain available in the US. “In my opinion, TikTok should not be banned in the USA, even though such a ban may benefit the X platform,” he wrote on X. “Doing so would be contrary to freedom of speech and expression. It is not what America stands for.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun declined to comment on the story during a regular press briefing Tuesday, referring reporters to Beijing’s previous statements on the matter. The country’s government had earlier denounced US attempts to ban TikTok and force a sale, calling them “economic bullying” and “plundering.”
The majority of the justices indicated on January 10 that they had worries over U.S. national security overrides free speech, and expressed concerns about the personal data that TikTok collects from users, how the social network manipulates content, and the influence that China has over TikTok parent company ByteDance.
If the court upholds the ban, U.S. app stores (including Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store) will not be able to offer the TikTok app for download of January 19. While TikTok users who already have the app installed on their devices will be able to continue using it, updates will not be permitted.
ByteDance will need to sell TikTok to a company approved by the U.S. government to allow the app to continue to be available.