Since the beginning of 2020, the Trump administration has been upping its rhetoric against China. From sanctioning Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials for undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy, accelerating the Uighur genocide in Xinjiang, and militarizing the South China Sea to banning semiconductors with American technologies from being shipped to Huawei, there has been bipartisan support against the increasingly authoritarian and power-hungry party ruling China. Recently, President Trump has decided to ban the Chinese-owned entertainment app TikTok if its U.S. assets are not transferred to an American-owned company by September 15 because of national security concerns.

In addition to having banned apps like Facebook, YouTube, and Google for years, China has stolen $600 billion (Foreign Policy) in intellectual property theft to cultivate its own censored domestic alternatives like Douyin, the Chinese mainland version of TikTok. Instead of promoting democracy in China with a true World Wide Web, the CCP uses its internet to suppress free speech and promote its own propaganda. In fact, under Chinese law, Chinese companies must turn over confidential domestic and foreign information to the CCP when requested. The US government has historically refrained from censoring legal websites in hopes that the World Wide Web would truly connect the whole world, so President Trump’s decision to ban TikTok is unprecedented. But, while our internet should continue to be as free and open as possible, it is essential that the US government protects our companies and citizens from those exploiting the open nature of the American internet and democracy. 

Many young Americans are against the possibility of Trump banning TikTok. Personally, as an avid user of TikTok, I am hopeful that Microsoft and Walmart will eventually take over the popular app, given Microsoft’s good track record and experience in maintaining the independence of its acquisitions such as LinkedIn and Github. I believe that there are legitimate concerns regarding the presence of a Chinese-owned app gathering user data, especially since TikTok was caught copying user clipboard data on the iOS platforms by Apple. However, I also believe that American companies like Google and Facebook should allow users to opt out of data collection. In fact, these very companies have recently faced scrutiny over the huge amounts of data they collect -  more data than the US government has on its citizens

When Former President Nixon established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1979 and when Former President Clinton admitted China into the World Trade Organization in 2001, it was in the hope that the PRC would gradually democratize as it joined the rules-based international order. Unfortunately, China proved that it cannot be trusted by exploiting the American free market and threatening American allies in the Asia-Pacific. Thus, since the US government has already been deceived by the CCP many times, I think that it will be best if TikTok is either banned or transferred to an American company to eliminate the possibility of the CCP stealing data on hundreds of millions of American users.