President Trump says that he and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have approved a deal that will allow the controversial web platform TikTok to be purchased by U.S. investors, reports the BBC. The announcement came following a Friday phone call between the two leaders, but there has been no official confirmation from Beijing.
Trump posted on Truth Social about the call, where they talked about a variety of topics including the TikTok deal. The post stated that progress was made and that the two leaders would meet at the summit in South Korea. He wrote, “The call was a very good one, we will be speaking again by phone, appreciate the TikTok approval, and both look forward to meeting at APEC!”
In another BBC article, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says that the details are done and that the deal just needs to be signed.
Gordon Chang is a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute and author of “Plan Red: China's Project to Destroy America.”
"There were no details, but since then there's been reporting from Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, it appears that Oracle will control the data, which is good because that will prevent the Chinese from stealing our information,” says Chang. “It appears that China will lose control of the curation algorithm."
TikTok is currently in control of the Chinese company ByteDance. Oracle, an American multinational technology company that was cofounded by Trump supporter Larry Ellison, is reported to be the new home of TikTok in the deal.
Chang says the Chinese will license the algorithm to U.S. engineers who will work on it.
"I assume that that means that China will not be able to again use the algorithm to propagate its narrative. But there's a lot of detail that we don't have, and until we have that detail, we can't really assess the situation 100%," states Chang.
