Drum Tower: Tick tock for TikTok

**David Rennie** (0:03)
The Economist.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:17)
On this vote, the yeas are 352, the nays are 65 The bill is passed.

**Alice Su** (0:26)
On March 13th, America's House of Representatives passed a bill demanding that TikTok, the enormously popular social media app, cut its ties with China, or else risk being banned in America.

**David Rennie** (0:37)
Although TikTok is based in Los Angeles and Singapore, it is a subsidiary of Bytedance, a Chinese tech giant. And that worries American politicians.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:48)
TikTok is a threat to our national security because it is owned by Bytedance, which does the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:55)
TikTok said its data is not accessible to China-based Bytedance employees. False.

**Alice Su** (1:01)
TikTok has been fighting back, insisting that the app is safe from state manipulation.

**David Rennie** (1:06)
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently denounced the bill, saying America was resourcing to hegemonic moves when it could not succeed in fair competition.

**Alice Su** (1:17)
I'm Alice Su, The Economist Senior China Correspondent, and I'm here with my co-host, David Rennie, our Beijing Bureau Chief.

**David Rennie** (1:23)
This week, we're asking, does Chinese ownership of TikTok really pose a threat to America?

**Alice Su** (1:30)
This is Drum Tower.

**David Rennie** (1:32)
From The Economist. Thanks.

**Alice Su** (1:42)
David, good to see you.

**David Rennie** (1:43)
How have you been?

**Alice Su** (1:44)
I'm good. I've just returned from a reporting trip in Tokyo and sadly missed the cherry blossom season there, but I'm back in warm Taipei and happy to be back.

**David Rennie** (1:56)
Did you have good sushi? Are you a sushi person?

**Alice Su** (1:58)
Yes, yes, I am.

**David Rennie** (2:00)
I think I could have guessed that, yeah.

**Alice Su** (2:02)
I am a voracious consumer of sushi.
I very much enjoyed it. I didn't see any hint of negative impact on the sushi industry from all that Chinese nationalism last year, at least not anything that I could observe.

**David Rennie** (2:15)
Maybe cheaper fish, because it doesn't have a Chinese market right now.

**Alice Su** (2:18)
Yeah, I was enjoying myself.

**David Rennie** (2:20)
Fantastic. So Alice, it's a big deal that the House of Representatives passed this bill by a massive margin. But of course, it's not law yet, because it has to go through the Senate and be signed by the president.

**Alice Su** (2:31)
Yeah, that's right. But there's been huge bipartisan support for it. And so for good reason, it has been really big in the news and has sparked a lot of discussion about what's going to happen next.
David, are you on TikTok?

**David Rennie** (2:41)
I am not. I am aware that lots of people are. A billion people are active users around the world. And half of all Americans, 170 million people in the US are on TikTok. And given that there's babies and people who don't have phones, that's a big majority of phone using Americans.

**Alice Su** (2:59)
Yeah, that's right. And especially younger Americans. There was actually a poll last year that found a third of American adults under the age of 30 were regularly getting their news from TikTok. So it's not just this fun social media app where you see people dancing on the streets, making little fun videos, but people are learning about the world. They're keeping up with what's going on through this app.

**David Rennie** (3:19)
Yeah, and presidential campaigns happen on TikTok. So it is clearly a very big deal that its fate is now up in the air. And in fact, it's also just remarkable that something is unbelievably popular is potentially gonna be banned by politicians who traditionally do not like to ban things that every young voter loves.

**Alice Su** (3:36)
Yeah, it would be strange for politicians to ban it, but technically this is not a ban, right? This is just a bill saying that TikTok needs to cut its ties with China, most likely by having its parent company, Bytedance, sell it to a non-Chinese company. And if it does that, it can still continue to exist and be used by American citizens. But if it doesn't do that, then it's likely that it will be banned.

**David Rennie** (3:57)
And we're gonna talk about all the ways in which actually it's not nearly as simple to just saying it can be sold to someone else.
So I'm not on TikTok. I'm in fact not on any social media except Twitter. It's not even Twitter anymore, is it? It's like X or something.

**Alice Su** (4:09)
Well, David, I know you're on Be Real because I've seen you use it in our recordings.

**David Rennie** (4:13)