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President Trump announced recently that the popular social media app TikTok will be shut down on September 20. Past that date, new users will not be able to download the popular social media app.
Existing users will still be able to access videos and upload their own, but the app will only be available to those who have already downloaded it.
Moreover, this also means that the app will not be receiving further updates. As such, as phone operating systems update, the app could fall behind and eventually become defunct.
By making the app unable to acquire new users, this order is essentially a “slow kill”. But why is President Trump so adamant about banning TikTok?
The biggest concern on the mind of the president is curtailing Chinese soft power. The Chinese government has been extending its reach into the Western world for a decade. Initiatives like the Confucius Institute have been installing Chinese interest in what can be seen as cultural chokepoints.
This has occurred while the country has also expanded its hard power, installing ships and soldiers in bases around the globe.
However, the hard power is easier to track, and easier to combat. The US military is unparalleled, and there are few foreseeable scenarios where China would engage the US in open warfare.
The country’s soft power, on the other hand, is much harder to keep in sight. The US has sought to curtail it where they can, such as limiting the sale of computer chips to Chinese company Huawei.
Huawei’s role in shaping the 5G standards that are rolling out now alarmed many US security personnel. After all, the Chinese government can compel any company in China to report information they gather to them.
If Huawei had installed Chinese hardware in US cities, they would have been able to pass information from US cellular activity back to China.
TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, got caught in the crossfire of Donald Trump’s attempts to slow Chinese soft power expansion. The app, which is extremely popular among children, has been rumored to pass information from users to the Chinese government.
American-based company Oracle has considered purchasing the US rights to TikTok. However, at the time of this writing, such plans have not yet been solidified.
For the time being, TikTok’s fate is up in the air. In this way, it largely mirrors all of China’s soft powers in the US.
