China analyzes Musk as a possible buyer of TikTok

According to Chinese government conversations that have been leaked to the press, it would be precisely X that would take control of TikTok and manage both businesses together, something that would help attract users to X.

The United States is the country where there are the most TikTok users on the entire planet (with more than 170 million) and that is why this movement is attractive to Musk, as it would also help him obtain large amounts of data for his Intelligence platform. Generative artificial, xAI.

Chinese officials have not yet reached a consensus on how they are going to proceed in this case, according to the media report, in addition to ByteDance or Musk themselves knowing how involved they are in this agreement.

China has the final say on TikTok

The role of the Chinese government in the sale of TikTok has been more relevant, as they consider that it could be an area of ​​reconciliation with Trump, who has launched threats about tariffs and export controls on products from the Asian giant.

In addition, Beijing owns the so-called golden share in ByteDance, a mechanism that gives it influence over the company’s strategy and operations and while TikTok maintains that this control only applies to the Chinese app, Douyin, the government’s export regulations They prevent national companies from selling their algorithms.

So far no amount has been given regarding the sale of TikTok, but Bloomberg analysts have said that the platform could be valued between $40,000 and $50,000 million. It should be remembered that Musk bought Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion.

Musk has a good profile in China

“In my opinion, TikTok should not be banned in the United States, even though such a ban may benefit X,” Musk wrote on his X profile. “Doing so would be contrary to freedom of expression. “It’s not what America stands for.”

While Musk has been in favor of the platform continuing in the country, his reputation is quite good in China, where he is considered a successful businessman, in addition to having years of experience collaborating with the government through Tesla.

Last Friday, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case on the possibility of banning the popular application next week and in this sense TikTok’s lawyer, Noel Francisco, made it clear that the social network will practically close on January 19 unless the Court intervenes.

When asked if the problem with the sell-or-ban law is the limited time frame for divesting from the social network, the lawyer argued that a divestment of the app would not be feasible in any time frame.

Given this fact, TikTok has continually argued that a sale is impossible because China would prevent the export of its algorithm. Francisco also stated that TikTok would be a fundamentally different service if it did not have access to content from global creators.

In this sense, he argued that a new version of TikTok in the United States with a new algorithm would prohibit any type of coordination with ByteDance’s global team of engineers and that a new version would have completely different content.