Peter Lewis: Asia business correspondent on Trump's Tiktok deal with China

US President Donald Trump announced an acquisition of social media platform Tiktok - a platform that is owned by Chinese software company ByteDance.

The President said that the deal was a closed case, however Asia business correspondent Peter Lewis told Ryan Bridge that there is more to be done. 

He said that although Washington has approved their side of the deal, Beijing and ByteDance are more guarded on their position. 

'No representatives from ByteDance were present at the signing. In fact, ByteDance hasn't even acknowledged that a transaction is taking place.'

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pay Lewis, is that Asia Business correspondent paid a good evening,

(00:03):
Good evening, Ryan. How's that TikTok deal being received in China?

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Well, interestingly, China is saying very very little about it,
which makes you wonder, has this really been agreed? We
know that Donald Trump has this habit of announcing deals
and saying that you know, they've all been signed off
when both parties haven't agreed and there's a lot of
details still left to negotiate. Or China is saying so

(00:30):
far about this deal, and I'll read you their statement.
They say, the Chinese government respects the wishes of the
enterprise I Bite Dance and welcomes it to carry out
commercial negotiations in accordance with market rules that reaches a
solution compliant with China's laws and regulations. Now that's a
far cry from what Donald Trump is saying, which is

(00:53):
that the deal is all signed off, China is on board,
Beijing's being much more guarded than Washington. It was also
noticeable that yesterday when he signed the executive order, no
representatives from byte Dance were present at the signing. In fact,
Byte Dance hasn't even acknowledged that a transaction is taking place.

(01:14):
So far, there is no mention of the purchase price.
There is no indication that China's made changes to the
laws that it would have to do to enable this
deal to go ahead. And in particular, the regulator last
week re emphasized that what China was doing was it
would license the algorithm to this US company that's ultimately

(01:36):
going to host the US version of TikTok. Now, licensing
the algorithm is very, very different from it being split
out from by dance and separated out into a company,
because the algorithm is obviously the secret source behind TikTok.
That's what decides what videos are recommended to people. And

(01:59):
the concerns all has been that this could be abused,
that the algorithm could be used for propaganda purposes and
influencing elections and so on. Now, if China is only
licensing this algorithm, can you really say that it's been
sold and it's been put into an American company because

(02:19):
China will still control and own the algorithm. So there
are things clearly missing so far from this deal. I
wonder if it will if US Congress had this in
mind when they signed the law forcing TikTok to be
divested from byte Dance had in mind a licensing agreements,

(02:40):
because it seems that doesn't really pass muster in terms
of what Congress intended.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
No, certainly that was the mainess. It's the reason that
this all came to the fore right, So fascinating to
know that a little bit of detail. China hitting for
a record one point two trillion dollar trade surplus Peter.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
And that's incredible, isn't it. That's the biggest trade surplus
that any country has had with the rest of the
world on record. I mean, basically, China has got a
trade surplus with nearly every single country in the world.
And all of this is coming despite these months of
sky high US tariffs. It hasn't stopped China's export engine

(03:26):
from really powering ahead. So it begs the question, how
is this happening? What's going on here? Well, what it
appears is that with access to the US markets being curtailed,
Chinese manufacturers have been very adept at switching their attention elsewhere. So,
for example, with India, the trade the trade surplus there,

(03:48):
purchases from India are to India by Indians, and all
time high shipments to Africa look like they're going to
be an annual records. Southeast Asia they're now above what
they were before the pandemic, shipments to the Middle East
all time highs. So what it appears is that there's
this reordering of global trade as certainly as far as

(04:10):
China is concerned anyway, and it's sort of creating a
new global trading system that doesn't include the US. Now
you can argue that actually it's the US itself that's
cut itself out from this new reordering of trade, and
countries like China had no choice but to look for
new markets, but it is being very successful in doing this. Now,

(04:34):
this is going to raise concerns because, of course there
are countries that are going to be very fearful about
what happens to their own domestic industries if China is
exporting to them in vast amounts, you know, cars, evs,
auto parts, steel, and so on. And we're already seeing
some problems. Indian authorities, for example, have received over fifty

(04:56):
applications now for investigations into goods dumped from China. Mexico
has already hit pack publicly. It's floating tariffs now of
fifty percent on Chinese products. So you would think that
this is going to cause some problems because these countries
don't want to see their domestic industry is being devastated
by this flood of Chinese exports. China says it's not dumping.

(05:20):
It says, you know, it's doing this all fairly and
it's just creating demand for high quality products. But not
everyone is convinced by that.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
We have similar problems here. I watched a little bit
of shih ing ping of the you in this week
in taking a swipe at Donald Trump when it comes
to climate change. But there the largest messa in the world.
Buy a long.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Shot, absolutely, And there has been some criticism of China's
new carbon reduction plan there. What they're saying is they're
going to aim for about a seven to ten percent
cut in emissions by twenty thirty five from its now.

(06:00):
People were hoping that we were going to see maybe
double that, around fifteen percent cut in emissions. Otherwise, there's
really no hope of the global temperature rise being restricted
to one and a half degrees centigrade above what they
were in the pre industrial period. But nevertheless, there is
a signal here and the signal is that China, first

(06:23):
of all, is certainly prepared to do something. It is
making efforts to try and get its emissions down. It's
making huge strides in green energy. I mean, it is
the world's leader now in green energy. I mean, look
at if you go to Beijing these days, and I
believe you used to live in Beijing, you'll remember the
smog and the pollution that was there. Well that is

(06:46):
all gone because everyone is driving electric vehicles these days.
These cities are becoming very high tech, very green en
environmentally friendly sort of cities. Compare that with the US,
where basically Donald Trump is saying climate change is a
con job and those countries that use renewable energy are

(07:11):
are destroying themselves. So a very big contrast between the
approach that she Jin Pig is taking and I think
he was trying to highlight here to what Donald Trump
is doing.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Peter, always fascinating talk to you. Thanks so much, Peter
lewis that Asia Business correspondent. For more from Hither Duplessy
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