Commentary: What TikTok and Tesla tell us about pragmatism in the US and China

LONDON: When Washington looks at China , it tends to see an ideological, interventionist, authoritarian superpower that favours its own companies while subverting foreign rivals. When it looks in the mirror, Washington sees the US as a pragmatic, capitalistic, democratic superpower that champions free speech and robust competition.

TikTok provides a slick short-form video service used by 170 million Americans and 7 million businesses, much to the annoyance of US rivals such as Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat.. Over nearly three years, it has spent US$1.5 billion on building a ringfenced data infrastructure in the US in partnership with Oracle.Nevertheless, there remain some strong reasons for banning TikTok. The first is the principle of reciprocity.

“We assess a strong possibility that content on TikTok is either amplified or suppressed based on its alignment with the interests of the Chinese government,” concluded a report published last December by the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University. Why Musk should play nice with China is clear. Why China should reciprocate, given its concerns about the security risks of Tesla’s Chinese fleet, is not so obvious, especially when domestic electric-vehicle manufacturers such as BYD see the US company as a deadly rival. But there may be good pragmatic reasons for wooing Tesla.

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