What New Legislation to Ban Tik Tok Tells Us About US-China Relations Today

In Mid-March the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that would effectively ban Tik Tok in the United States. Tik Tok's parent company, Byte Dance, is Chinese. This bill would force Byte Dance to sell Tik Tok to an American buyer or else the app would no longer be available in the United States. President Biden has said he’d sign this bill into law, but at the moment the legislation is stalled in the Senate. 

 

My guest today Kaiser Kuo argues that these anti-Tik Tok measures are emblematic of a "moral panic" around China that is increasingly taking hold among American policy makers. He is the host of the Sinica Podcast and after discussing our views on whether or not the US should ban Tik Tok, we discuss the broader geopolitical context in which a move like this is being contemplated.