Chinese officials are reportedly exploring an option for Elon Musk to take over TikTok if the popular social media company fails to avoid a ban in the US.
While Chinese officials would prefer to keep TikTok in the hands of parent company ByteDance, senior government officials have already begun discussing contingency plans for TikTok and how to work with the incoming Donald Trump administration, Bloomberg reported.
The platform has appealed the impending ban in the US to the Supreme Court, but the justices have shown an inclination to uphold the law, which would force the company to be sold or face a ban in the country by January 19.
The Chinese government – which is expected to have some say in the matter – is reportedly looking at a potential scenario where Musk buys TikTok US and runs it along with X, the social media platform he bought in 2022.
Notably, the platform’s 170 million users could significantly improve Musk’s position vis-a-vis advertisers and potentially help solve one of the biggest issues faced by his social media platform.
Advertisers have been fleeing X/Twitter, ever since the billionaire took control in late 2022 and brought in drastic changes.
Besides, Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI could benefit from the huge amount of data collected by TikTok.
xAI’s Grok chatbot already leverages the data on X to provide real-time search results and the TikTok inclusion could help build on that functionality.
According to a Reuters report, two Democratic lawmakers have urged President Joe Biden and Congress to extend the January 19 deadline for the sale or ban in order to allow 170 million Americans to continue using the app.
President Biden could extend the deadline by 90 days if he certifies that ByteDance is making substantial progress towards divestiture, but the company is unlikely to meet that standard, the report added.
A law passed by a bipartisan majority in the US Congress in April and signed by President Biden requires TikTok to sell off the company by January 19, or face a ban in the US.
The Bill also prevents ByteDance from controlling TikTok’s core technology, which feeds users video content based on their interests, making the platform a hit among the young generation.
During the recent proceedings in front of the Supreme Court, the President Biden-led Justice Department warned about the “grave national-security threats” posed by Chinese ownership of TikTok.
Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump, in a filing, has urged the Supreme Court to pause a law to ban the social media platform if its Chinese parent company does not sell it.
Trump asked the court for time following his January 20 inauguration to “seek a negotiated resolution” to the conflict.
In his first term, President Trump had expressed a willingness to let TikTok be sold to a US company, emphasising that the federal government should benefit financially from any sale.
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