The TikTok war is about more than technology

American officials were obviously not thrilled with such growth. TikTok's influence on US society and culture was difficult for them to comprehend, let alone accept. That also applies to its ability to store, access and use the data it harvests to study the habits and behaviour of citizens.

Open battle

The state of relations between the two countries — with the US engaged in an open battle with China's moves toward a new world order— in no way helps TikTok make its case.  

Most social media applications, American or otherwise, have had a similar, if not harsher effects than TikTok's, but it is the Chinese origin of the latest sensation that most troubles Washington.

Read more: Is TikTok a real threat or a false pretext?

The Americans fear that China is spying for sensitive information and acquiring it through its advanced technologies. It leaves politicians willing to take any means necessary to counter a Chinese success of TikTok's magnitude on their own land. 

Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence estimate TikTok's value in the US anywhere between $40 billion and $50 billion. It is likely to rise.

Meanwhile, the battle between the two major world powers is escalating on several fronts: microchip and semiconductor production, international maritime passages, and of course, the disturbing advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies.

Read more: How microchips are reshaping geopolitics

Amid this technological clash, TikTok's share of the global digital advertisement market amounts to 2.3%. Despite the global recession, TikTok was the only social media app to show growth in the last few months. According to The Financial Times, TikTok made $10 billion in advertising revenues in 2022. 

TikTok's tremendous success forced its competitors to reassess their offerings. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, refocused on search capabilities and launched its Reels feature to keep pace with the growing hunger for video content popularised by TikTok. 

Read More: TikTok under attack amid fears it is harvesting data

Most social media platforms followed suit and rolled out TikTok-inspired features, such as Pinterest's Watch TV, Snapchat's Spotlight, YouTube's Shorts, and Netflix's Fast Laughs. Spotify also began showing videos on its home page.

Washington politics fans the flames

ByteDance, TikTok's Beijing-based parent company, has had to spend much time, effort and investment in the US to alleviate fears there over its intentions while applying with conditions imposed upon it. All of this is a clear indication that unlike the public which supports it, the political mood is not in favour of TikTok.

Washington's unease is based on two main drivers: the lack of trust in China and its motivations, and the attempt to slow the fast pace of China's technological progress.

ByteDance spent over three years negotiating with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which vets investments involving foreign parties for risks to national security. To date, no draft agreement has been reached.

TikTok's parent company spent tens of millions of dollars to build and scale its presence in the US. It also invested over $1 billion in Project Texas, an initiative to store the data of US users in the cloud computers of US companies to minimise any Chinese access to it.

The project also aims to enhance independent oversight and transparency to circumvent a Chinese law from 2017 that forces Chinese companies to share any personal data with potential impact on the country's national security with the government.

The Financial Times says TikTok has a similar plan for Europe, dubbed Project Clover, which will see user data stored in three data centres there, two in Ireland and one in Norway.

But still, TikTok is still facing an outright ban in the US, where it employs 7,000 people after ByteDance acquires its predecessor app Musical.ly.

Political forces in Washington have drawn up proposals to force ByteDance to sell its US operations to an American company, with politicians expressing frustration with the Biden administration's handling of regulation after the White House was granted extra powers of oversight.

A Chinese Commerce Ministry spokeswoman said the country would "firmly oppose" such a sale.

An arm of the Communist Party?

Late last year, as part of an investigation into media leaks, ByteDance was forced to admit that its employees obtained the personal data of US journalists working with Buzzfeed and The Financial Times.

This was not the first case of journalists being tracked by online applications. Forbes revealed that accusations had been launched over the last few years against Uber and Facebook for similar acts. Microsoft had also tracked a French blogger's private email account in 2012 as part of a probe into a former employee's leak of trade secrets.

None of these companies ever faced a potential ban in the US. But then again, none of these companies were Chinese.

Even the diversity of ByteDance's shareholders could not help rescue TikTok from the onslaught.

Around 60% of shares are held by global investment companies, including US investment giants like BlackRock, General Atlantic, and Sequoia.

The company's employees own 20% of its shares. A further 20% is owned by ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming who keeps control of the company via dominant voting stock, according to The Financial Times. 

China has not shied away from banning American applications and websites since 2009, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Google, and thousands of other  platforms it sees as Western.

If the US takes a similar tack, it will not be smooth sailing. A ban would set a landmark precedent in the world's leading democratic country, proud to uphold constitutional rights and freedom of speech.

Without a clear, logical and convincing basis for such action, a ban could shake that democracy and spark the outrage of big American investors who own TikTok shares.

China's vehement opposition to any forced sale of TikTok US into American hands stems from its determination to defend the interests of Chinese companies in general and their presence and growth outside China, and not just in the US.

There is a long list of other Western countries that have recommended a TikTok ban on government-owned devices. It includes the United Kingdom, New Zealand, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, and Canada.

Beijing said such "crackdowns" show hostility, urging these states to "respect the market economy" and provide a business climate that does not discriminate against particular companies.

Anupam Chander, a professor of global internet regulation at Georgetown University, seems to agree. "The risk that the United States faces is that China may respond," he said. "Any TikTok ban could be devastating for modern international trade." 

The Chinese Commerce Ministry has expressly stated that any sale involving the export of technologies must be made "according to Chinese laws." The Beijing government considers some advanced technologies, including content algorithms, vital for its national interests.

But that stance in and of itself has given US politicians additional grounds to claim that TikTok is not independent and is, instead, an arm of the Chinese government or Communist Party.

Data security is national security

The TikTok war is part of an existential battle between two major powers that cannot accept each other's supremacy.

In Washington's eyes, safeguarding data security is not solely a matter of national security in its political and military sense, what with the alarming growth in China's intelligence capacities.

It is also rooted in a fear of new ideologies and cultures infiltrating the lives and thoughts of American users in relation to political freedom and human rights in a manner that goes against long-standing US values.

After all, Washington cannot afford the adulteration of the image it strives to project of dominance over the  foreign policy game, regardless of whether that picture is either genuine or dishonest.

The battle also falls under US efforts to contain China's technological expansion, especially over AI, as it seeks to contain Beijing's attempts to surpass the West —not only in terms of cheap labour but also in the worlds of tech and finance.

Tensions between the two countries peaked last August after a visit by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, the world's biggest microchip producer.

The visit followed a series of restrictions imposed by the Biden administration on the export of advanced semiconductors and microchip manufacturing equipment to China, fuelled by concerns over China's use of advanced technologies to develop its military systems, including weapons of mass destruction.

China was quick to strike back.

In February, a Chinese spy balloon roamed American skies before being shot down by US aircraft.

Soon after, China's President Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow just after the International Criminal Court accused Vladimir Putin of war crimes, in a nod to the Russian president's legitimacy.

The visit was seen as a move by Xi to challenge the US-led world order established since the end of World War II.  

Previously, the face-off between China and the West looked to have peaked when the United States and Canada banned Huawei and ZTE on grounds of the two firms' alleged association with the Chinese government.

At the time, Europe was still not ready to give up its addiction to Chinese products, but that changed when China sided with Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, which prompted the German and Dutch to consider banning Huawei from their 5G networks.

Washington is further tightening the noose around the necks of Chinese firms which are considering a listing on American stock exchanges, requiring full disclosures of financial information and audits.

As a result, five big Chinese companies — China Life Insurance, PetroChina, China Petroleum, Aluminum Company of China, and Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical — delisted from the NYSE by order of Beijing.

The decision was motivated by China's unwillingness to comply with US regulations on audit transparency. 

The TikTok conflict is, ostensibly, a technological battle with a hidden political-military layer. It is a clash of cultures and freedoms; a struggle for power between two giants, each of whom is seeking to control the world order.

The clash is not the first of its kind. But it still represents a major turn of events in US-Chinese relations that are increasingly motivated by mutual distrust and fear.