As the sale of TikTok enters its final stages, Beijing is saying it wants the last word.In a bureaucratic two-step, China on Friday updated its export control rules to cover a variety of technologies it deemed sensitive, including technology that sounded much like TikTok’s personalized recommendation engine. Beijing’s displeasure alone could scare off TikTok’s suitors, many of whom have operations in China. President Donald Trump this month issued an executive order restricting Americans’ dealings with TikTok beginning in mid-September. He and other White House officials have said the app could be a Trojan Horse for data gathering by the Chinese Communist Party, an accusation that ByteDance has denied. In 2018, Qualcomm called off a $44 billion deal to buy the Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors after Chinese regulators simply failed to either approve or reject the transaction.

Source: Economic Times August 30, 2020 10:34 UTC