This is a game America can't win, either way the CCP gets to keep the upper hand, everpresent threat or discrediting entirely.
When China doesnt open up its fire wall for US apps, why should US allow Chinese?
Right now the public opinion in China (not mine) is that India and America are hypocritical bullies and abusing the "national security" excuse, while China "never banned" any foreign web services, those "simply refused to comply with Chinese laws regarding terrorism" and their "inaccessibility" totally justified.
You see, here's the logical trap, Tiktok ostensibly didn't refuse to comply with any foreign law, and it will do any "dirty work" if being asked to (unlike foreign companies in China), so by this logic, it's a model citizen and the ban is unjustified and ridiculous. This plays right into the party's hands, right into its "century of humiliation" ideology.
>why should US allow Chinese?
So here's the catch, the CCP sabotaged and overthrew the Chinese Nationalist Party (now Taiwan) government exactly by exploiting its liberal constitution and free speech, the lesson they learned from that epic success is that never allow these freedom, China never touted freedom and rights so it doesn't matter, while the US being the democracy beacon breaching it has everything to lose.
This is some really bad history. The Nationalist Party was no defender of free speech.
The Chinese Civil War began in April 1927, when the Nationalists rounded up and executed thousands of Communists in Shanghai and other major cities.[1] What made this massacre even more shocking was that the Nationalists were allied with the Communists up until the moment they carried out the purge. That event set off the Civil War.
https://www.state.gov/communist-china-and-the-free-worlds-fu...
>He was a brilliant student of China, a fierce cold warrior, and a tremendous admirer of the Chinese people, just as I think we all are.
>We must also engage and empower the Chinese people – a dynamic, freedom-loving people who are completely distinct from the Chinese Communist Party.
>So to somehow think that we ought to ignore the voices of the people of China seems to me the wrong approach... But it seems to me we would dishonor ourselves and the people of China if we ignored them.
I am not sure why that would be the US's problem.
I have no doubt the that CCP will be able to control the media narrative within their own country. I just don't care. That was always going to be the case.
It has become clear that China is not on the road towards freedom. That theory failed.
And it is because that failed, that we need to take a new approach to things. The way to get China to change, is to pressure them to change.
And we can pressure them, with economic pressure, by engaging in some of the same tactics that they use against us.
If they are going to defect, eventually we have to respond in kind, in order to not put ourselves at a disadvantage.
This is definitely not a public opinion.
Public opinion in US is splited like it always is in every single matter.
I agree on the ban... or, at least, they should take a closer look regarding national security.
Sending a lot of citizen personal info to the opposite super power like China and Russia does seem concerning, don't you agree?
OP means this is the public opinion in China, not in US. Or at least that's the public opinion that CCP wants to install. And unfortunately most of the people surrounding me agree this. And I can't argue with them without convincing them the "sometimes misguided censorship" is deliberate and people should not accept censorship in the first place (if most of them do China would have already been different). It's literally a trap.
Public opinion in China is going to be almost always anti-US. That's just regular propaganda for decades.
It's not safe to have differing view in China regarding nationalism.
Not sure why this is news though.
I'd guess it's a very small percentage.
to directly answer your question, if you think this is a war of ideology, this move doesn't do the US any favors, regardless of how necessary or justified it is
Fine.
Here are 3 geopoltical issues that are way bigger than TikTok banning: Hong Kong, Taiwan, disputed islands on South China sea with Vietnam and Philippines. These issues evoke much stronger nationalism.
A large portion of Chineses probably already look at US as very bad guy regarding these 3 geopolitical issues already. Trying to turn Chinese's regular person to be positive by not banning TikTok is not worth it.
It's not like "oh yeah, I like US now because they don't ban tiktok, even though they try to help taiwan, hong kong, and etc. It's fine. TikTok is way more important here." Probably said no Chinese person ever.
When 95% of the comments on Weibo are like what I said, I think it's pretty safe to say it is public opinion.
But even without TikTok matter, the general opinion in China would be anti-US anyway, no?
US is a bad guy to China regarding many matters like Hong Kong, Taiwan, islands on South China sea with Vietnam and Philippines.
This is not anyway unique to TikTok's matter. Tiktok problem seems pretty mild.