Hello and welcome to For4Stech, a show about journalism. We're coming to you from T on TikTok market sensible and prudent step in national security or is it a sign that we are fast moving into a new Cold War? To discuss this we are joined by Marina Zhang who is an associate professor at the Australian China Relations Institute which is part of the University of Technology Sydney and joining us as well is Oneing Sun who is a professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Technology Sydney. Marina Jiang and Oneing Sun, welcome to For4Stech.
Thank you Anthony. Thank you for having me. Now TikTok has over a billion monthly users and if that figure isn't impressive enough, 21% of the internet uses TikTok. It has a third of mobile users.
In many respects it is a tech success story of the last decade. However, it's fair to say that the narrative around TikTok lately is not about its success. How would the two of you characterize that narrative? Marina, you can go first.
I'm a tech person so my research is in technology innovation and more and more I'm looking at technological development innovation in the context of geopolitics. So TikTok sits really well in this intersection of technology and geopolitics. So you're right, of course, it's not just about technology. In fact, it's about geopolitical power struggles between the two largest countries in the world.
And Oneing, how do you view the narrative? Coming from a media studies perspective, which is my area of expertise, my focus on Chinese social media, both Chinese languages, social media such as WeChat, all Chinese own social media platforms such as WeChat is the range of Western narratives surrounding these platforms. One of them being that they tend to be seen by the West as platform for the Chinese propaganda or for the Chinese government to sort of exert their influence. That's one kind of trope, if you like.
The other one is a Chinese company. To the West, there is security concern because both platforms are known to have provided sort of a... And technically, it's possible to provide information to the Chinese government and Chinese government and on locations have requested information and so on and so forth. But having said that, I would just say, as Marina said, it's all part of the geopolitical narrative in the sense that other big tech companies such as Facebook and Twitter equally lend themselves to all sorts of issues in ranging from privacy issues on one hand and to confidentiality and allowing the government and major companies to access information on the other.
But somehow, it seems that the geopolitical is such that these two Chinese platforms tend to... And a range of other Chinese platforms as well. And we will see other platforms mentioned in the future because they get to played out in a geopolitical logic context. Yes, and look, as someone who's not on TikTok, but a parent so aware of TikTok, I got to meet TikTok is crazy dancers and sketches about Harry Potter and all that sort of thing.
It does seem a bit confusing about the nature of the debate around this platform, but it fundamentally comes back to user data and the ability of that data to be mined. Marina, can you go through, I guess in some detail, why people are so concerned about TikTok? Depending on how you define who are concerned about TikTok, so I ran several different surveys in the US. The survey basically tried to investigate how many people, what are the percentage of the population at different age groups and how concerned they have about TikTok imposing national security threats.
So you can see the older the survey groups are, the more concerns they have. But on the other hand, you can see, well, the majority of the users of TikTok's platform is actually young people. So it seems people that don't use TikTok, they have more concerns about national security. But the fact that a video creating a video sharing platform, I mean, is a social media platform, right?
So it's as well as saying it's the same as all the other platforms in the US. And the critical thing is, well, so who can have access to the data of the platform? So if I remind you of the audience of this show, 20 years ago, when Google launched it's such a engine in China, obviously, the Chinese government had very clear rule. That is, you must have your data state stored in servers located in China.
And the data actually is subject to the government check. And of course, Google said, okay, we cannot possibly obey those rules, those are evil. So the left by and then they, but there was never a clear card rule. What kind of threats TikTok as a platform is threatening the US national security?
And what are the best ways to solve these problems? No. So the TikTok basically did two things first to lobby the politicians, emotionally DC and second, to spend a lot of money. So in this so-called Texas project to relocate data stored on servers in the US.
And also since, well, I'm too saying it didn't work. So it's just the question I'm having is, well, is this just a kind of a struggle, a Chinese oriented or origin, or tech company originated from China is facing this kind of geopolitical risk in the US? Or this is actually a better a better beyond that? And that's I think the conundrum in all of this.
It's interesting that you mentioned Google, I mean, Google and Facebook famously aren't available in China. So there is a symmetry to the whole situation here. Is that asymmetry just was naturally going to mean that there was going to be a dispute like this? It was just inevitable?
Right. Well, as I just mentioned, Google and Facebook, the close to leave China, the reason is because the felt the rules imposed on them by the Chinese government was not fair and was in the own words deemed as evil, because they just couldn't possibly have the data stored in China. So that's why they left. And that's the reason on the surface.
But on the other hand, it is Chinese companies, local firms, competitors to both Facebook and Google. So they received a lot of government support directly or indirectly. So they actually hold the majority of the market share. So if you cannot compete with local ones, you leave.
So you can explain the situation in both ways. And if you look at Microsoft and even Apple and Tesla in recent cases, and they chose to work with Chinese government to combine these Chinese government rules, so they actually use the service located in China. So in the end, you find if you make money, if you have commercial success, you tend to stay. Otherwise, you know, all the other courses, I mean, what do you call it, freedom of expression, or you do no evil kind of firm ideology and overtake your business decisions.
I never really thought of Facebook as a very moral company. Right. Okay. One thing to do, do you think that this asymmetry has meant that we were always going to have this issue?
I think so. I think, I mean, look, it does look, I mean, there is obvious that asymmetry here, right? You know, the Chinese people cannot access all this major tech company. Although, mind you, a lot of people use VPN, like, you know, I was talking to a Chinese class visiting, I think Australian asked about 20 of them and I said, how many of you use VPN to access Western platform?
Not a single person didn't raise their hand. So everybody was used VPN. So it's not actually not available. It's just that you have to go through another hurdle.
Having said that, that the government not align them to be in China is itself why you want him to go and have your platform overseas. It is, you know, patiently not symmetrical. So that is why a lot of people in the way who want to ban this Chinese, they just think there's no reciprocity here. There's no equity here.
You know, if you want to free market, you know, we should actually everybody. But having said that, I think what the US is trying to do seems to be motivated by a protectionist impulse in the sense that, you know, we are here for the protected American market, that American, so we don't want them to be threatened by a tech from overseas, particularly from a China, which is ideologically, and you know, in terms of security, and geopolitical is, you know, it's hostile to us. So there is, you know, there is a whole range of reasons for them to not to trust or not to like whether they trust them is one thing, whether to like your presence is another thing. And I think as the US China rivalry is going to continue, this kind of asymmetry is going to continue.
And the rhetoric around the around TikTok and in the debate that just happened with the bill going through Congress, I thought was quite interesting. And it does point to the fundamental aspect of that's being disagreed here is the fact that the Chinese government has a level of control. But if you if you accept that and accept that as risk that has to be managed, then Xi'en, another company that needs to be looked at BYD, another company. So you can just see that the issue here around TikTok is one that could cascade very quickly.
And we could find ourselves in a major trade war. Both of you concerned that the TikTok situation isn't an isolated issue about a successful social media platform, but something that is far more far-reaching. Yes, I'm a tech person. So I believe in the force of free market.
And I don't necessarily think common control of a platform is good. But in this case, it's just like, I mean, the US is you can say is it retaliating the fact that Google and Facebook were banned in China, or you can say it's walking away from a free market principle. So why I'm saying that? Well, it's just, you know, you say, well, potentially Chinese government can repatriate the data store in the US, if in the case of war, in the case of whatever.
But that's just the same as you assume somebody holds a gun that president is going to kill. So that's not fair. That's not fair in the sense that this will open a much bigger, bigger, new era in terms of what is the free market? What is the implications for other foreign investment companies in the US?
The UID, in the shame, and all those companies, they have already shown concerns of investing in the US, because you never know in the free market, like the flagship free market in the world, like the United States, actually your business is not, your business decision is not purely business. You have to think about geopolitical factors. So if the case of TikTok is going ahead, this is the passing at the Senate and the president, this is going to totally change the international business, international relations. I think this TikTok situation could be looked at in one of the two ways.
One is as a communication platform in the same way as WeChat, and then the Americans or the West could be wary of that, because it can carry content that is, you know, from that point of view has sort of propagandistic purposes that, you know, are doing the bidding of Chinese government, so to speak. So that, you know, within the ecosystem of media landscape, you know, it's something to worry about, you know, both WeChat and TikTok, you know, falling into that category, although WeChat is different in the sense that its primary users are people in the Chinese diaspora where the TikTok users are in the so-called Western mainstream, right? So this is within the ecosystem, media ecosystem, but stepping out of that media system, looking at TikTok as one of the tech products, if you like, and then BYD as a vehicle, as a car, and TikTok as a platform, or a security camera, as another electronic goods or something. And the cranes, you know, the American, now I actually considering, you know, looking at the cranes coming from China, American Harbor, you know, on the possibility that they might be carrying spyware or something like that.
So again, the whole range of products that went upon the time is just part of this global realization of, you know, of media, of important export and infrastructure, and now need to be reviewed in a completely different light. So sometimes that's the way of saying, the room has changed, it hasn't changed, it hasn't changed. Yes, there's the height and paranoia, which has no end. I mean, if you're looking at something like an electric car, yes, it's an electric car, but if you have a paranoid computer and it's got a screen and a microphone and it's listening to me and it's, but you're kind of going down a road that ends up in a very silly but also dark place.
Now, look, just to be devil's advocate here, there was a precedent for what we're seeing, or what's being proposed with TikTok. Grindr was originally owned by a Chinese company, it was forced to be sold as many years ago, but it was forced to be sold because it was viewed that the sensitive nature of the data that Grindr would hold on a whole lot of people, including government officials. That's how it took place and Grindr is a successful company. Is that a sensible model for TikTok or is TikTok too big?
And is it, I guess, also two prestigious for this to happen? I mean, for any company, TikTok is a very young company. And it's so far from my study of the International Business, TikTok, TikTok, Tik Company, internationalization is the most successful one. And it created this very new business model.
But nevertheless, it's very new. It's learning how to deal these complex cultural institutional legal frameworks in the country where everything is totally different from China's. So if the company was indeed doing something that was deemed not quite right, I think the company has put enough attention and commitment to correcting what they have done wrong. And they try to, without any clear rules, they try to do everything to convince the politics and the public that they are a decent international company operating in the US.
And they're creating not just a home for young people to express their ideas and also for I mean, a large number of small businesses to make a living on the platform. So I mean, this is a typical learning curve. And it's just, my concern is again, back to the free market, the principle is it's just, it's just because the national security concern is overarching. And you just don't need to have any evidence.
And you can just have, okay, let's pass this bill to ban this company. That's, that itself is really worrying. It's really opening this new age new era of doing international business. I think to answer your question, Anthony, as whether TikTok could actually think about following the model of Grindr and so, I personally would find it very hard to imagine that it would sell because it is, even though it's very young, it's very, very big.
And, and it's seem to be, you know, it's similar to the right way in terms of its, you know, influence and its impact and in terms of the way that is raised, the Western consciousness about the, you know, the threat of China. So I think it's not just a practical business matter, it's going to be a symbolic sort of a matter. So I think from my point of view, I think any sort of attempt to sort of giving, if you like, to the Americans of request would be seen by people back in China as somehow succumbing to the pressure. So I think that has, that has implications in terms of the national, nationalistic sentiment, consumer sort of pro-China sort of sentiment.
So I think they would have to think very, very long and hard and there's too much to lose, you know, in terms of political capital. That's, that's my, but the other point that Marina was mentioning about the national security that's attached to the discussion about these social media platforms from China is that I think there are two issues. One is the capability, the other is the intention. So far, all these social media platforms have the capability to surveil, to access data, but whether they have intention to consistently and regularly do that or not is another issue, right?
I think they don't trust China because China is, you know, they just decided it's not a country with its communist government, so we can't trust them. So, so we don't know what their intentions are. Even though the problem is they're not going to do that, we can't trust it, they're not going to do that. But I've just come across some, most recent data from the intelligence source that's published in this forum called Intercept, which actually says that, you know, the intelligence spokesperson in the US has now explicitly said to the Forever Righting article that the fact that the TikTok constitute a national threat is purely hypothetical.
Yeah, the word that uses is purely hypothetical. In other words, we have no evidence, but we don't trust the intentions. So the same is with, with, with WeChat, you know, Trump, when he was the president, issued executive ban on WeChat, citing national security reasons. And by the San Francisco based legal firm, took Trump to court on the grounds of freedom of expression and challenged the Trump's government to provide evidence of national security.
It couldn't come up with any. Interesting. And one of the interpretations to have sent of the bill is that there's a, basically a time frame, but a sale would need to take place. And what I've heard, and it's just an opinion, but it was from a source that I would trust, the time frame given for the sale is completely insufficient when we're talking about a company of this size.
You don't, you don't go and buy a TikTok in, you know, over a weekend. Not by giving that sort of time, they're giving 165 days. And they were saying that it's just insufficient when you're talking about a company that could be worth between 40 to $200 billion to be doing a sale. So effectively, it's a ban.
But I want to go back to what we were just talking about before. A lot of people think that China would not allow TikTok to be sold. Do you both think that as well? But basically, if it came down to, by dancing, we want to sell TikTok and just basically cash out.
It's too difficult. We want to take the money and go. But the Chinese government would just say no. As we argue in the conversation from the perspectives of both the company and the country, the sale is almost impossible.
So the company, I mean, as we argued, if it agreed to sell the company at a discounted price, it will be considered by the majority of netizens in China as a kind of a weak the spineless. And that will really attract a lot of criticisms of TikTok's parent company bydance. Biden's has at least five different video platforms that are talking to different companies, different market segments in China. And it also faces a very strong competitor, which is domestic oriented.
It's called Quashol, similar business model as TikTok. So the company's business in China will suffer a lot. And second, the Chinese government is not going to, in the first instance, the government has already issued the ban of for selling any advanced algorithms to foreign countries. So this is actually very clear.
So it is very difficult for the company to argue that the core technology behind TikTok is not in that advanced algorithm category. So it's very unlikely. Okay, so look, India has already banned TikTok. And when it left India, most of the TikTok users went to Facebook and Instagram.
It's likely that something like that would happen in the US if TikTok, sister exists there. The bottom line, which I think a lot of people aren't really thinking about what that really means is a greater concentration for meta, which already has a huge control of that market that is essentially becoming a monopoly. People actually thought through the real implications. It would be very hard.
And you think about it, you stay with a platform. Actually, you stay, you have this locking effect as a user. Basically, you have your followers, you have your groups, you have, if you're creator, you have all your created videos and people's reactions to your videos on the platform. And closing down the platform means you lose all those things.
Those are intangible asset for users. Can you really easily transfer those to a different platform? It's almost impossible. Especially TikTok now in the US is not just a social media platform.
It is a stream promise platform. So people selling making a lot of money out of their followers on the platform. So closing down basically means all those people will lose their digital assets or digital footprints on the platform. And plus, you look at the market segmentation.
I mean, how many young people and the age, let's say 21, use Facebook? I have a teenager daughter, one is just a teenager. Yes. And they don't use Facebook because they think that's old people's platform.
And so it's quite clear. They're targeting different user groups. And then your question about if TikTok closes down, wouldn't they have people thought about, you know, for the concentration of the big ones? Well, I think Trump has thought about implications.
That's true. And he doesn't like it because he doesn't like TikTok users migrating back to Facebook because he thinks Facebook has done himings. So yeah, of gigantic flip-flop from him, isn't it? Yeah.
Yeah. Let's move to Australia. Have they been talks about banning TikTok? We tend to follow America, especially when it comes to matters of security.
What's the talk in the government circles about TikTok? Well, it depends on which politicians you're talking about. Peter Dutton, a leader of opposition, I was quick off the mark saying that we should follow America and consider banning. And soon after that, a shadow minister for cybersecurity and a home affairs and James Patterson has said similar things.
But on this issue, it seems to the Labor government is pretty so far, it's been very clear. And I'm actually quite impressed that they actually made up their made their position fairly clear very soon. And they just said, we have no plans to do that. We are on country.
We make our own decisions. We're very young and wanting some. Thanks for being on Forfistate. Thank you, Anthony.
Thank you. And thanks for listening to the program. This edition was recorded at the studios of Ture-S-R and heard across the country on the community radio network. Forfistate is produced with the assistance of the community broadcasting foundation.
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