For China, Tiktok becomes a useful negotiation chip in tensions with us

China criticized for years against the commitment of the United States to force the sale of Tiktok, once accusing Washington of demonstrating the “logic of thieves” in response to the success of the platform.

Now, Beijing is promoting conversations about how the Chinese owner of the video exchange platform, the Bytedance, could give up the property of its US operations.

The change has raised questions about what China could expect in return, and analysts suggest that Beijing has come to see Tiktok as a useful negotiation chip to gain concessions in more pressing problems.

China has not yet confirmed an agreement on Tiktok, which Washington has presented a Beijing propaganda tool and a threat to privacy, and there are numerous outstanding questions about what a sale would imply.

The most crucial thing is the question of who would possess and control the algorithm of Tiktok recommendations, which has been accredited by promoting the explosive popularity of the platform in the United States, where it claims more than 170 million users.

According to Chinese export controls introduced in 2020, companies are prohibited from transferring sensitive technologies such as Tiktok algorithm without government approval.

As recently as last month, state -owned China Daily warned in an editorial that export restrictions presented a “red line for Tiktok transaction.”

If China is willing to deliver the algorithm control, you will expect great concessions on issues such as commerce, the curve on Chinese and Taiwan technology, said Dexter Roberts, a member not resident in the global center of China of the Atlantic Council.

“If something changed on the Chinese side that makes them now more willing to make a deal in Tiktok, I think it’s because they feel they can get much more from the Trump administration than they originally thought, and they can be contemplating the use of Tiktok as a negotiation lever,” Roberts told Al Jazeera.

On the United States side, President Donald Trump seems anxious to reach Tiktok quickly as part of an effort to block his first face -to -face meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping since he returned to the White House, Roberts said.

“And to obtain that sitting and that ‘treatment’, it seems that she is willing to give a lot in return,” he said.

While both China and the United States have acclaimed the prospects for a resolution to confrontation on Tiktok, the parties have offered substantially different accounts of where things are.

In an informative session on Monday, a high -level White House official was summoned as the media said that the Trump administration was confident that China was on board with an agreement that would see the Tiktok algorithm licensed to a new joint company in the United States.

According to the terms of the agreement, Oracle, based in Texas, whose multimillionaire co -founder Larry Ellison is a firm sponsors of Israel, supervise and the license algorithm is re -training using US data. UU., According to the reports of the official’s comment.

Since the beginning of the 2023 war in Gaza, in which Israel’s attacks have killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, Ellison has committed cybernetic support and cloud infrastructure to Israel.

Oracle’s growing role in the future of Tiktok occurs after several Republican legislators, since 2023, have accused the platform of promoting pro-palestinian content.

The last informative session of the White House occurred after Trump, who has repeatedly extended the deadline to force a sale of the platform, said Friday that he had secured an agreement during a telephone conversation of almost two hours with XI.

The White House Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on Saturday that the spin-off would see Tiktok controlled by a board of seven members, full of six Americans, and would ensure that her algorithm is “controlled by America.”

“Both the United States and China now support ‘information nationalism,'” said Jeffrey Towson, a digital strategy consultant previously based in China, Al Jazeera.

“China has long insisted on information flows that are controlled at the national level, and not by foreign companies or entities. The United States has reached the same conclusion. Digital platforms create powerful control points. They can shape and limit what can be said, read and observe.”

While it is not clear how the sale of Tiktok could proceed under Chinese law, an agreement on the platform could mark a reduction of commercial tensions between Washington and Beijing, said Heiwai Tang, director of the Global Institute of Asia in Hong Kong.

“If the current additional 30 percent of 30 percent of the United States in China could be reduced, the gain for China would be significant,” Tang to Al Jazeera told.

China has only gone so far as to say that the sides have reached a “basic framework consensus” in Tiktok.

“China’s position on Tiktok’s issue is clear: the Chinese government respects the wishes of the company in question, and would be happy to see that productive commercial negotiations in accordance with the market rules lead to a solution that complies with China’s laws and regulations and takes into account the interests of both parties,” said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China in a statement after XI call with Trump.

China’s language on a “frame” to solve Tiktok’s dispute leaves space for negotiations, and “details like who really gets the algorithm, which, of course, Washington has said that the United States could still be at stake,” Roberts said of the Atlantic Council.

Chunmeizi Su, Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney, who investigates platforms such as Tiktok, expressed doubts that the complete details of the Tiktok algorithm would be provided in any license agreement.

“The Tiktok algorithm is not just about Tiktok; it is a central technology that has been used among other applications under Byte.

“If this is the final result, it means that the license agreement will only provide surface level technologies or, in other words, a Carazón de Tiktok Us. And even this will take a long time to achieve.”

Although an agreement on Tiktok would reduce the temperature between the United States and China, the sides would probably avoid explicitly linking the sale with concessions in other areas, said Charlie Chai, vice president of 86 Oresearch research based in Beijing.

“I don’t think there is explicit compensation or get anything in return,” Chai told Al Jazeera. Washington could silence the new tariffs or export restrictions later, he said, but that would be done as “an extension of a good faith negotiation.”

“It is important to preserve the political optics that no explicit trade was made at the expense of supposedly not negotiable central interests, which can easily lead to accusations that neither Beijing nor Washington want to face,” Chai added.