TikTok Ultimatum Paints Target on US Leaders Like Apple in China
- Beijing could use market access as weapon to retaliate
- President Xi has to balance looking strong with economic needs
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Now that President Joe Biden has signed off on a law that could expel TikTok from the US market, Beijing must decide how best to retaliate over an attack on the world’s most-valuable start-up.
The legislation approved on Wednesday would give Chinese parent company ByteDance Ltd. nearly a year to divest the video-sharing platform before facing an outright ban. At a daily briefing hours before, China’s Foreign Ministry directed reporters to a previous vow by commerce officials to take “measures to resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.”