BEIJING: The U.S. government recently coerced ByteDance to sell video-sharing app TikTok’s U.S. business to American companies, repeating its old trick of seizing high-tech enterprises by abusing state power.
Media and experts pointed out that the United States used the pretext of national security to carry out coercive transactions, which has seriously undermined market principles and international rules, and exposed its unabashed hegemony, setting a bad precedent in the international community.
In recent months, the U.S. government threatened to shut down TikTok’s operations in the United States, and then forced it to sell itself to American companies.
International commentators and scholars have used similar words — robbery, extortion and heisting — to describe the nature of the U.S. coercion over TikTok.
The Australian Financial Review published an article, saying that the U.S. acts have politicized the business issue, and mingled national security together with personal political interests. The analysts said that in the battle over TikTok, the U.S. administration set a precedent of creating an unstable playing field for companies doing business in the country.
Actually, the United States has repeatedly suppressed foreign enterprises that challenged its leading position, even those in allied countries.
In the 1980s, the United States suppressed Japan’s semiconductor industry represented by Toshiba by similar means. A few years ago, the United States used “long-arm jurisdiction” to dismember France’s manufacturing conglomerate Alstom, which eventually led to the acquisition of its major business by its U.S. rival General Electric Company.
In recent years, the United States has also targeted other leading companies in the fields of communications and the Internet. Travel site Expedia and digital media group IAC chairman Barry Diller told CNBC that the TikTok deal is a “crock” and has become a “political mishmash.”
“Once you start tossing this grenade about protectionism … it’s inevitable that race just keeps going up and up and prevents natural commerce,” Diller added.
The United States has been touting the principles of market economy and fair competition, but it can be seen from the TikTok case that its self-interest is the sole U.S. concern and its only one means of competition is robbery. – Agencies
