Donald Trump vs Chew Shou Zi: Who is winning? What the TikTok U-turn tells us

The conclusion to the US’ TikTok ban was pretty anticlimactic. I was expecting it to hold a lot longer, considering the grilling its CEO Chew Shou Zi had endured in Congress, the brewing concerns over national security and the will-they-or-won’t-they drama over a potential US saviour buying them out. Instead, TikTok restored services after shutting down for less than a day.

While Singapore users are not affected, the social media platform became the backdrop to an important illustration of US-China rivalry. As US bureau chief Bhagyashree Garekar puts it, TikTok went from pariah to hot property overnight as politicians attempted to backpedal and find a new way out of the impending ban. It was a high stakes game after TikTok all but decided it would rather shut down than sell to a US company. Mr Chew went straight to US President-elect Donald Trump for a way out.

But in a twist of events, two things reset the deck and changed the calculus on both sides. First, many Americans, brushing aside national security concerns their lawmakers had over Chinese platforms, went one step further to migrate onto Xiaohongshu, a Shanghai-headquartered app, as Yew Lun Tian reports.

They didn’t flock to Meta apps like Instagram or Facebook. It didn’t matter that Meta has done away with fact-checkers, which will hit some communities harder, as one commentator points out. Gen Zers don’t want to be associated with the social media platforms that millennials and Gen Xers use.

Which raises the question: what leverage does TikTok have if people seem to be happy with ready alternatives? And on the flip side, wouldn’t the outcome where Americans live their digital lives on a China-based platform actually be worse for the US already concerned about the China bogeyman?

Second, Trump had a chat with Chinese President Xi Jinping just three days ago, suggesting he may have reached the outlines of a deal with Mr Xi. He claimed TikTok and trade were discussed but their mention was glaringly missing from the readout from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Did he gain an upper hand as he claimed or did he discover limitations to his deal-making approach?

It’s unclear what the way forward is but expect lots of jostling behind the scenes as all sides – US, China and TikTok – negotiate to secure their interests. Mr Xi cannot afford to look weak and aiding ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, isn’t a core interest, though anything that affects the Chinese economy is a no-go.

Trump, meanwhile, will want to secure some sort of early victory to demonstrate how consequential his presidency is – a preoccupation that has shaped his claim of credit over the Hamas hostage situation. And Mr Chew will want to... hold onto his job, as will the 7,000 TikTok employees in the US. Worryingly, the Singaporean CEO could end up the proverbial pawn in this great power competition but let’s see how it pans out.

Until next week, here are my picks of the week to get yours started.

Cheers,

Suling Lin, senior columnist

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